The girl cleared away the washstand and turned round again. Everything was in order. If he wanted to he could sleep here in the afternoon. Hopefully he would. He needed to. She listened out for the other room, but everything was quiet there. This quietness didn’t entirely satisfy her. But it continued.…
Amanda sat down. She felt neither upset by, jealous of, nor in love with the young Pagel. On the contrary, what she saw and learnt about him only did her good. It confirmed what was strong in her—her will to live.
Look, she thought roughly, here’s a clean and decent fellow, and for neither of us have things gone exactly smoothly. Why should I give up courage and despair when I clawed myself out of the dirt only two years ago? Thus ran Amanda’s thoughts. But now they were interrupted, because in the office next door sounded a penetrating whistle—not the tuneful notes of a contented man but a wild warlike shrill, something which even Amanda’s unsoldierly mind felt as a signal for attack. On the attack, quick march! Up and at the enemy! Then: Victory, fame, glory!
In the same moment, just when Amanda jumped up from her chair, the door was torn open. Pagel pushed his head into the bedroom and shouted: “AAmanda, wench! Hunger! Grub! Soup! On, on!”
She, with all the indignation people from the folk have for every exaltation, scrutinized his flushed face. “You’re going crazy,” she said aloofly, and passed by.
“What are we having, Amanda?” Pagel asked. Yet obviously he was indifferent.
“Goose giblets with barley.”
“Goose giblets again! And today! Today there ought … Oh, I certainly haven’t the patience to nibble at goose wings.”
“If you don’t soon stop the village urchins from forever crippling my geese by throwing stones at them, you’ll have to eat goose giblets every day, Herr Pagel,” replied the Backs with dangerous calmness.
“Amanda, couldn’t you give me a rest today from nagging? This is the first time for a long while that I’ve been more or less happy.”
“If my geese are to go on having their bones broken because you’re happy, Herr Pagel, then it would be better if you went around unhappy and did something for farming. Because that’s what you’re here for; not to be happy.”
Pagel’s amused gaze rested on her angry face. “Don’t go on pretending. I can see that you’re not in the least annoyed, because you’ve filled my plate with the stomach and heart. Which, as a matter of fact, I’m fondest of. As for the other thing, I ought to tell you that I’ve just had news I’m soon to be a father.”
“Oh!” Her tone sounded in no way pacified. “I didn’t know till now that Herr Pagel was married.”
This female response so surprised young Pagel that he put his spoon demonstratively into his goose stew, pushed back his chair and stared at Amanda with big eyes. “Married—me married? How do you arrive at that idiotic idea, Amanda?”
“Because you are shortly becoming a father, Herr Pagel,” she replied maliciously. “Fathers are usually married—or at least ought to be.”
“You’re a goose, Amanda,” said Wolfgang amused, returning to his soup. “You only want to pump me.”
For a while all was quiet.
Then Amanda said stubbornly, “I’m wondering if the young lady, when she noticed she was going to become a mother, whistled so tremendously and talked such rubbish to people.”
“Your wonder is quite correct, Amanda. The young lady was certainly not so pleased at the time, although she was also perhaps just a wee little bit happy.”
“Then,” said Amanda decidedly, “I would leave at once and marry her.”
“That’s what I should like to do. Unfortunately she has absolutely forbidden me to show my face.”
“She’s forbidden! And expecting a child from you?”
“That’s right,” nodded Pagel gravely. “You have completely grasped what I wanted to say.”
“Then …” She turned crimson.
“Then …” She did not dare say it.
“Then I should …” She became speechless.
“What would you do, please?” he asked very gravely.
She examined him with an ungracious eye, angry with herself for embarking on this inquisition which had discovered something she hadn’t wished to know. And she was angry with him because he spoke about these matters in just the same flippant, stupid way as other men—and she had thought him very different! So she looked at him testingly and unsparingly.
But seeing his twinkling eyes, she understood that he was actually very happy, and was only making fun of her and her stupid curiosity. And that he was exactly as she had thought he was. And, as is always the case, the happiness of the one was communicated to the other. She gulped suddenly.
She spoke quite as Amanda Backs, however. “If you’ve rummaged about enough in the giblets, I should now lie down for half an hour. It’s warm in there, and I’ve put a blanket for you on the sofa.”
“Good. I’ll do that for once,” he said obediently. “But wake me in half an hour.” And at the door he turned round. “I’m thinking of having it about Christmas, the marriage I mean. The son’s arriving three weeks earlier.”
And with that he shut the door as a sign that he no longer valued any answer, and that this subject was now absolutely closed. And as Amanda now knew everything she urgently needed to know, she also felt no need to talk anymore. She quietly cleared the table, took away the cutlery and sat down at the tiled stove, so that he could have real quiet for the remaining half-hour.
But of course, he wouldn’t sleep but would read his letter again!
IV
Pagel really had wanted to reread his letter but hardly had he lay down but a tiredness overcame him like a large, benign, warm, dark wave. The sentence informing him that he would be a father at the beginning of December and that Peter would soon be writing to him herself, was part of his dream. It produced a happy feeling of lightness, and he went to sleep smiling.
However, his dream was about a child, and that child was himself. With some amazement he saw himself standing on a grassy lawn in a white sailor suit with a blue collar and a sewn-on anchor. Over him a plum tree spread its branches laden with small yellow plums.
He saw himself stretching up to the branches. He saw his bare knees between his long socks and his trousers. And that one of his knees had been cut, but was already scarred over. I must have already dreamt that as a child, he said to himself in the dream, and saw himself reaching for the branches as a child. He was on tiptoe and still couldn’t reach them.
Then a voice called him, and of course it had to be Mama’s voice from the veranda, but no, the voice came from the thick crown of the tree itself, and it was Peter’s voice:
Little tree, shake and shake—Throw down your plums for my sake!
And the little plum tree shook all its plums over him like a golden shower of rain, and they fell, ever more, ever thicker, ever more golden. The green lawn was quite yellow with then. As if hundreds and thousands of buttercups were blossoming, and the child that he was bent over them, shouting with joy.
“No, I can’t disturb him now,” said Amanda. “You’ll have to come back later.” She gave Sophie Kowalewski a bellicose look.
But Sophie was not at all bellicose. “Perhaps I could wait here,” she said politely.