The Rittmeister did not, but he nodded profoundly.
“Suppose,” went on the officer, “you have a car …”
“I haven’t,” explained the Rittmeister. “But I shall buy one.”
“Today? Tomorrow?”
“Certainly in a few days.”
“Either today or tomorrow, otherwise no use,” said the officer, seizing hold of his paper again.
“I don’t know.” The Rittmeister hesitated. Was this man with the monocle a representative of a motor-car factory? “After all, it’s a large sum of … I don’t know if the money …”
“Money!” cried the other contemptuously, crumpling his paper fiercely. “Who pays cash for cars? Give a bill!” He vanished behind his newspaper.
This time the Lieutenant gave no help, but sat in his corner with such an expression of repudiation that the Rittmeister withdrew into his, and, remembering his own newspaper, also began to crumple it fiercely. But somehow he couldn’t read. Continually his thoughts strayed to those mysterious words about a too-clever father-in-law, a ticket which must be paid for first, and a car which need not be paid for … In spite of many weeks in a peaceful sanatorium he was seized by a very impulsive anger, and when he thought of how the young man had treated him in the wood, he discovered that that matter hadn’t yet been settled; while, if he took into account his treatment today at the hands of the parchmentlike man, he felt even more that something ought to be done.…
The pair opposite had begun to whisper, which was unmannerly, the more so because they were obviously whispering about him. He was, after all, a reputable officer and a successful farmer. If you don’t discuss such things in front of ladies, you certainly don’t whisper them in front of elderly gentlemen. He had had a good deal to drink, and he now gave his paper a powerful blow—the row could begin. But the train was slowing down—they were already at Frankfurt; he would have to get out and change. His anger ought to have been quicker.
“You’re getting out, Rittmeister?” asked the Lieutenant politely and groped for the other’s suitcase.
“I’m changing! Don’t trouble yourself, please,” exclaimed the Rittmeister angrily. Despite which the Lieutenant lowered the case from the rack. “I have been asked to inform you,” he said in a low voice without looking at the Rittmeister, “that we are having a sort of old comrades’ reunion the day after tomorrow, October the first, in Ostade. At six in the morning, please. Uniform. Weapons, if any, to be brought.” Then he looked at the Rittmeister, who was overwhelmed; so overwhelmed that he said: “At your service!”
“Porter!” shouted the Lieutenant from the window and busied himself with the Rittmeister’s luggage.
Just as things had become interesting one must leave. The Rittmeister looked at the gentleman in the corner. He had stretched out his legs, his monocle dangled from its band; he seemed to be sleeping. Hesitant but respectful, the Rittmeister stepped across the somnolent legs, murmuring: “Good morning!”
“But with a car, you understand?” muttered the sleeper and dozed off again.
The Rittmeister stood on the platform in a daze. For the third time the porter asked where he was to carry the luggage. First the Rittmeister said to the Neulohe train, then he said Ostade.
“Oh, you want to go to Ostade. Then you’re on the wrong line. You ought to have gone by Landberg,” said the porter.
“No, no!” cried the Rittmeister, impatient. “I want a car. Can I buy a car here?”
“Here?” asked the porter, looking first at the passenger and then at the platform. “Here?”
“Yes, in Frankfurt.”
“Of course you can buy cars here, sir,” the porter reassured him. “Here you can get anything that way. That’s what they all do. They come by train from Berlin and buy their cars in Frankfurt …”
The Rittmeister followed the man. Everything was clear now. He had seen the officer who had been described to him a hundred times, whose face he had never before glimpsed: Major Rückert, who was plotting the big Putsch against the Government. It was coming off early the day after tomorrow, at six, in Ostade, and the Rittmeister was to be present, with a car.
Father-in-law was too clever. He wanted to wait and see if the Putsch was successful before he bought his ticket. The Rittmeister, however, wasn’t so clever about money. He would buy a car at once, on credit. That might not be businesslike, but it was the right thing.
Docilely he let himself be taken to the waiting room, where he sat down pensively, tipped the porter, and ordered a coffee. He was not thinking now about the Putsch with Major Rückert and the impolite Lieutenant. That affair had been settled: he would be in Ostade the day after tomorrow at six o’clock. There would be no hitch, and no need to be uneasy about it. He was not the over-prudent, crafty Geheimrat Horst-Heinz von Teschow: he was Rittmeister von Prackwitz, and when an old comrade said to him: “Join us!” he went along, without inquisitiveness. The little he had heard was enough for him. The Reichswehr and the Black Reichswehr were in it; that is, the old soldiers and the young ones, against a Government which printed worthless money, which had given up the Ruhr fight, and which wanted to “agree” with the French. One didn’t need to reflect about such things—the Putsch was in order.
What did absorb him, while he stirred the coffee, was his car! It was of course already “his,” although he didn’t even know yet what it should look like. He had wanted one for a long time, only he had never had the money—and, as a matter of fact, there was none now. Indeed, he was traveling to Neulohe so as to be on the spot when the rent for the farm fell due on October the first; that is, the day after tomorrow—a difficult time. The Rittmeister was like a child. When a child has managed ten times not to take off shoes and stockings and splash in the water, it only requires the boy from next door to say the eleventh time: “Ah, it’s so warm today!” In a minute the child, in spite of all commands, goes bare-legged and splashing. The Major had said that he ought to buy a car. Money was scarce, scarcer than ever, and the car would have to go on a dangerous adventure at once. But the Rittmeister didn’t think a moment of that. He didn’t even think of the Putsch and the Government to be overthrown; all he thought of was that he could at last buy a car. This Putsch was a splendid affair; it procured him a car.
The Rittmeister reviewed all the cars of his friends and acquaintances. He hesitated between a Mercedes and a Horch. Cheap ones were not considered. If one was to have a car, it couldn’t look like a country doctor’s—it had to look good; and since it was bought on credit, a bit more or less didn’t matter.… No, the problem was not the car—it was where to get a chauffeur quickly, one who would look all right at the wheel; otherwise the pleasure of sitting behind him was halved. And the thing had to be done quickly, because the Rittmeister wanted, at the least in two or three hours, to be on the way to Neulohe in his own car.… And then there was the garage. Which would be the best place for a garage, close to the Villa?
The Rittmeister, wrapped up in his thoughts, resembled extraordinarily that retired officer who, a few months before, had sat at the gaming table, and who, out of sheer longing not to miss a single stake, couldn’t wait to learn the rules of play. Once again he didn’t know the game, and he was staking higher than he could afford. He might indeed buy some sort of corrugated-iron garage, but such things looked like nothing at all.…
“Herr Rittmeister,” said for the third time a humble voice at the next table.