And while he lifted himself gropingly from the earth, while he walked on with aching limbs, taking no notice of the sentry, not even thinking of him—so completely had his new understanding extinguished all that had just happened—he could not help recalling again and again that summer morning in the wood when he had driven little Meier before him with a pistol. How he had despised the pitiful coward; what disgust had overwhelmed him at his entreaties! And now the anxiety was gnawing at himself: Shall I be as cowardly? Will I even have the courage to press the trigger? How will I die?
This thought grew ever stronger in him, and in a few minutes was completely dominant.
How will I die? Like a man or a coward? Will my hand tremble perhaps? Will I shoot myself blind, as little Rakow did? God, how he screamed!
He shuddered, gripping the smooth pistol stock in his pocket as if it could give him that self-confidence which had never failed him his whole life long and which now, when death was near, so completely deserted him. I must be quick, he thought desperately. I must go quickly to the Black Dale, so that I can make certain. How can I live when I don’t even know if I am courageous enough to die?
And all the time, while every fiber in him seemed to be urging a decision, he was going painfully but persistently away from the Black Dale, from death, farther and farther away, toward the carrying out of a repugnant job of spying which was already of no purpose to him. But he was no longer aware of this. When he saw a small public-house which he had sometimes visited, it occurred to him that he could not possibly appear before the servant-girl Frieda in such soiled clothes, and he entered. Ordering a glass of beer from the landlord, he asked if he hadn’t some jacket which he could put on in place of his dirty one.
The landlord looked at him for a moment; he knew more or less, of course, whom the Lieutenant represented. He disappeared, to come back with a brand-new trench jacket. “I think it will fit you,” he said. “What’s happened to yours then?”
“Fell down,” muttered the Lieutenant. He had stripped off his own jacket and saw on the outside of the lower arm a large, highly-colored bruise. Without thinking he opened his shirt over the chest and found there the marks of the gun butt. Doing up the shirt again, he encountered the landlord’s eye.
“It hasn’t started already, has it?” whispered the man.
“No.” The Lieutenant put on the trench jacket. “Might be made for me.”
“Yes, I saw at once you’re about the same size as my boy. I bought him the jacket for tomorrow. My boy’s also going, Herr Lieutenant.”
“Good,” said the Lieutenant, taking a gulp of beer.
“You will see that I have the jacket back this evening, won’t you, Herr Lieutenant?” begged the landlord. “He wants to look decent when he goes tomorrow—it’s the first time he’s been in anything like this.”
“That’s all right,” was all the Lieutenant said. “What do I owe?”
“Oh, nothing,” replied the landlord quickly. “I’d like to ask, if you won’t think it—”
“Well?”
“Were you in the barracks?”
“No, I wasn’t in the barracks.”
“Oh! Then you won’t know, either. They say there’s something wrong there.” He looked expectantly at the other. Perhaps he was thinking of the blue-black patches on the Lieutenant’s body. “You don’t think, sir,” he went on earnestly, “that it’s likely to be serious tomorrow?”
“Be serious? How?”
“Oh, I only mean—serious. Fighting, shooting and so on. In that case I shouldn’t let my boy go.”
“Rubbish.” The Lieutenant laughed heartily. “What are you thinking of? Fighting, shooting! There’s nothing like that now. A Putsch like this is a really happy affair. There’s no heroic dying either, now. Heroic dying has been dismissed since 1918.” He stopped suddenly, as if disgusted.
“I don’t know if you are in earnest,” explained the landlord, “but I ask completely in earnest, Herr Lieutenant. Because I have only the one boy, that’s why! If something happened to him, who’d take over this house? One doesn’t want to have worked all one’s life for nothing. You ought to have seen the place when I bought it twenty years ago. A pigsty! But now! No, if I knew that it might be serious tomorrow—it would be too much of a pity about my boy. Otherwise he can gladly go—it’s also good for business, because we have so many customers among the military.”
The Lieutenant repeated his assurance that everything was all right and not at all dangerous, and once again he promised to send back the jacket in proper time that evening. Then he left. He had lied to the landlord, but what did that matter? A few lies more or less were not important now. Seen close at hand, it was enough to make one sick, the motives leading such people to join in. But perhaps his own motives seen close at hand were equally nauseating to Herr Richter. The weakening of his self-esteem had already made such progress that the Lieutenant could conceive this.
The short halt in the public-house, the two gulps of beer, had done him good. Now he stepped out and soon came to the little street of villas which was his goal. Pulling his cap down over his brows, the Lieutenant hurried on; he did not wish to be seen and recognized, here where so many of the officers lived.
A colonel of the Reichswehr inhabited the villa he was making for. Socially the Lieutenant had every right to press the button where the notice read: “Visitors only.” However, he didn’t ring here but went ten paces farther, to a small iron garden door with the notice: “Tradesmen.” He walked along a flagged path—the visitors’ entry was laid with black and white gravel—round the back of the villa to where a clothes pole and dustbins stood. He did not, like the visitors, climb five steps up to the first floor with its mirrors, but went down five steps to the basement with its gratings on his way to the kitchen.…
The Lieutenant had always believed that the end justified the means. He had not been ashamed to turn the formerly very respectable Frieda into a contemptible house spy, since by this he had often learned garrison secrets of considerable utility. If he was now making this visit with less pleasure than formerly, that was not only because his whole state of mind was far from cheerful, but also mainly because he had never before come this way in daylight. Our daylight deeds bear one aspect, our deeds at night another. The colonel on the first floor had two daughters, and the Lieutenant had even danced with them in the past; it would be embarrassing should they see him on a visit to the kitchen. He was not ashamed of his actions, but he was ashamed of being discovered at them.
He was fortunate—stepping into the corridor he met no one other than the maid Frieda. She was coming out of her room, carrying a duster and dustpan.
“G’day, Friedel!”
Friedel, about twenty, full-breasted, with that somewhat sturdy rustic beauty of which not a trace is left in the twenty-fifth year, was a little startled. “Is that you, Fritz?” she asked. “Are you coming in the day as well, now? I’ve no time for you, though.” But she put down the duster and dustpan against the wall.
“Well, Friedel,” said the Lieutenant awkwardly, “aren’t you pleased to see me?”
She made no attempt to approach him, take him in her arms, kiss as usual. Generally she was radiant whenever she saw her Lieutenant. Who knew what the girl had been imagining to herself? Devoted infatuation, humble readiness.… And now?