“Curiosity killed the cat,” laughed the girl.
Such a world still exists, thought Wolfgang, half smiling, half desperate. And I had only forgotten it because in Georgenkirchstrasse I lost sight of it. But children innocent and unspoiled, and real innocence, still exist. What the pudding’s going to be is important, even though hundreds of thousands of people have given up asking about their daily bread. Looting at Gleiwitz and Breslau, food riots in Frankfurt-on-the-Main and Neuruppin, Eisleben and Dramburg …
He eyed the child with suspicion. It’s a swindle, he thought, an artificial innocence, a carefully protected innocence—just as they have bars in front of their windows. Life will reach her in spite of all this. What will remain of her innocence in two or three years’ time?
“Good day,” said the child. She had only just noticed him, perhaps because he moved his chair in order to get up and go. He took the hand which she extended. Beneath a frank handsome forehead she had dark eyes. “You’re the gentleman who came in with our Liesbeth?” she asked, looking at him seriously.
“Yes,” said he and tried to smile at so much earnestness. “How old are you?”
“Eleven,” she answered politely. “And your wife has nothing on but your overcoat?”
“That’s so.” He still tried to smile and appear at ease. But it was damnable to hear one’s shortcomings from the mouths of others, especially from a child’s. “And she has nothing to eat—and won’t be able to get anything, not even a pudding with macaroons.”
She remained unaware that he had intended to hurt her. “Mamma has so many clothes,” she said meditatively. “Most of them she doesn’t wear at all.”
“Quite right,” he said, feeling rather shabby with his cheap talk. “Such is life. You haven’t learned that in school yet, eh?”
He felt lower and more miserable than ever before those serious eyes.
“I don’t go to school,” said the child, assuming an air of importance. “I’m blind.” Again that look. “Papa is also blind. But Papa used to be able to see. I have never been able to, at all.”
She stood before him—and he, so quickly punished for his cheap sneering, felt still more strongly that she was looking at him. No, not with her eyes, but perhaps with her candid brow, her pale curved lips; as if this blind child could penetrate further than did Petra with her eyes.
“Mamma can see. But she says she would prefer not to, as she never knows what Papa and I feel like. We wouldn’t let her though.”
“No,” agreed Wolfgang. “You don’t want that.”
“Fräulein and Liesbeth and Trudchen and Herr Hoffmann can tell us what they see. But when Mamma tells us, then it’s quite different.”
“Because it’s your Mamma, isn’t it?” said Wolfgang cautiously.
“Yes. Papa and I are both Mamma’s children. Papa, too.”
He kept silent, but the child expected no reply. The subjects she was speaking about were so self-explanatory that there was nothing for him to say about them.
“Has your wife a Mamma—or has she nobody?”
Wolfgang stood there, a very thin smile round his lips. “Nobody,” he said decidedly. If only he could get away. Knocked out by a child exposing his unkindness, his want of character.
“Papa will certainly give you some money. And this afternoon Mamma will go and see your wife. Where is she?”
“Seventeen Georgenkirchstrasse,” said he. “Fourth floor,” said he. “At Frau Thumann’s,” said he. Something welled up within him. If only she could get some help! She ought to be helped. She was worthy of all help. Evanescent world in which you have your being, poor thing, both entangled and entangling. Just as you suddenly feel she is freeing herself from you, you notice how useful she was to you. Expelled into the dark, with clear light still existing far away. But now it goes out. You’re on your own, and don’t know whether you can and will return or not. Poor Petra … He was indeed a beggar; and now that the chance of help had arrived he felt that it would be of no use to him, because he was hollow, burnt out, empty.
“I must go now,” he said to the kitchen. He shook hands with the child, nodded, said: “You know the address?” and went. Went into the sultry, the confined, tumultuous town, once more to try and hold his own in the struggle for money and bread. For what? For whom? He did not know and was not to know for a long while.
VI
The Manor, as it was called in Neulohe, was the old gentleman’s house. Rittmeister von Prackwitz lived about half a mile farther on near the farmyard and among the fields, in a small villa of six rooms, speculative-builder style; a jerry-built erection of the early inflation period, the plaster already in flakes. The Manor—which the old gentleman wouldn’t leave, if only because he wanted to stay near his beloved firs and incidentally keep an eye on his son-in-law was a ramshackle yellow building also, but with three times as many rooms as the younger people had and at any rate a real terrace and steps, a sun porch with French windows, and a park.
Black Meier passed the Manor. He had no business there and was not looking for any, wishing to avoid the angry old lady. He was bound for the staff-house (situated uncomfortably close to the Manor) where he had an office and a bedroom—the other rooms stood empty because of the Rittmeister’s economy campaign. (Yet the Rittmeister was a great man!) Since he wanted to question the young Fräulein about her telephone conversation with her father, he went first to his room to wash his hands and face, and sprinkled his chest profusely with a scent called Russian Leather, which was obviously the right thing for the country, since it was advertised as “Pungent, Manly, Dashing.”
He looked at himself in the mirror. That time was, of course, long past when he had felt ashamed of his small stature, blubber lips, flat nose and bulging eyes. Successes with women had taught him that to be handsome was not essential; on the contrary a somewhat odd appearance attracted the girls as surely as a salt-lick attracted the deer.
Naturally Violet would not be so easy to deal with as, for example, Amanda Backs or Sophie Kowalewski. But little Meier believed—again not in agreement with his employer’s view—that little Vi, although only fifteen years old, was a bitch. Certain glances, a young bosom consciously displayed, certain expressions—sometimes bold, sometimes of the deepest innocence—these could not be misunderstood by such an experienced wencher. It was natural, when you came to think of it. Old Herr von Teschow was said to have thrashed a lover out of the bedroom of her mother, then unmarried, a discipline which the mother subsequently tasted herself. So people said. Well, the world was large and everything possible. Like mother, like daughter. To call the little bailiff, because of his thoughts in front of the mirror, an intriguer and a rascally seducer would be an exaggeration. His thoughts were not plans; only day-dreams full of youthful vanity. He had a young puppy’s ravenous appetite; he would have liked to bite at everything—and Violet was very handsome indeed.
But, as with a puppy, his fears were as big as his appetite, and he was afraid of a thrashing. He was bold enough with Amanda Backs, who had no relatives; but he would never be able to behave like that with Vi, who had the support of a quick-tempered father. Although in his dreams he had arranged everything, including an elopement and a secret marriage, he still funked the return to his father-in-law’s, for he could conceive of no homecoming which would be at all satisfactory; the young wife would best manage that interview. He need have no fear of Vi, nor respect for her; once she had slept with him she would be no better than he was. Aristocratic origin peeled off as varnish did from mass-production furniture, revealing the common pine beneath.
Black Meier grinned at himself in the mirror. “You’re a gay dog” may have been the meaning of it, and, as confirming his valuation of himself, he remembered that the Lieutenant had spoken to him this morning in a more comradely tone than to the sneaking Kniebusch.