Frau Pagel started and looked anxiously toward the door. “Fräulein?”
“Mathilde, do concentrate a little. What are we talking about? Your son’s marriage! If I were to be so absent-minded … I always told the ladies of my regiment.…” Frau Pagel still hoped to learn something definite, but what she hardly knew. She succeeded in putting in a word. “The girl is perhaps not entirely bad.…”
“Mathilde! A creature! Only a creature!”
“She loves Wolfgang—in her way.”
“I don’t wish to hear anything about it. No indelicacy in my house!”
“But Wolfgang gambles, Betty, gambles everything away.”
Frau von Anklam laughed. “To see your face, dearest Mathilde! Boys always play a little—you mustn’t say ‘gamble,’ it sounds so vulgar. All young men play a little. I remember that time we had the regiment at Stolp—there was a lot of playing among the young fellows. Excellency von Bardenwiek said to me: ‘What are we to do, Frau von Anklam? We must do something about it.’ I said: ‘Excellency,’ I said, ‘we’ll do nothing of the kind. As long as the young people play they’re not making fools of themselves in another way.’ And he agreed with me at once.… Come in.”
There had been a gentle knocking at the door. Fräulein put her head in: “Ernst is back, Excellency.”
“Ernst? What does he want? These are peculiar manners, Fräulein! You know I have a visitor, don’t you? Ernst—the idea of it!”
In spite of this outburst Fräulein still dared to say something. Like a mouse in the trap she squeaked. “He has been to the registry office, Excellency.”
Frau von Anklam brightened up. “Oh, of course. He shall come in as soon as he has washed his hands. What a long story you make of everything, Fräulein. Fräulein, one moment, don’t always run away at once, so heedlessly. Please wait for my instructions. First give him a spray or two of eau-de-Cologne; yes, the toilet eau-de-Cologne. One never knows whom he has met there.”
Alone with her cousin again, she said: “I wanted to find out how the wedding went. I considered for a long time whom I could send to such an affair, and I sent our Ernst. Well, now we shall hear.” And her eyes shone. She moved her heavy body to and fro in anticipation. She was to hear something new, something more for her lumber-room of memories. O Lord, how splendid!
Ernst, the servant, entered: an elderly man, diminutive, close on sixty, who had been in Frau von Anklam’s service for a lifetime.
“Wait at the door,” she called. “Stay at the door, Ernst.”
“I know that, Excellency.”
“Immediately afterward have a bath and change every stitch. Heaven knows what bacteria you have picked up, Ernst. Come on, do tell us about the wedding.”
“There was none, Excellency.”
“You see, Mathilde—what did I tell you? You get excited about nothing. What did I tell you only three minutes ago? She’s quite a common person. She has thrown him over.”
“Might I ask Ernst a few questions, dear Betty?” said Frau Pagel faintly.
“Certainly, dear Mathilde. Ernst, I don’t understand you. You stand there like a stick. Don’t you hear that Frau Pagel wants to know everything? Speak. She has of course thrown him over. Go on, what did he say to that?”
“Pardon me, Excellency. I believe the young gentleman didn’t turn up either.”
“You see, Mathilde, what did I tell you? The boy is all right, the bit of playing does him no harm; on the contrary, he is absolutely sensible. One doesn’t marry such a person.”
At last Frau Pagel got in a word. “Ernst, is it certain? Was there definitely no wedding? Perhaps you arrived a little too late.”
“No, madam, certainly not. I was there in time and waited till the end, and also asked the clerk. Neither of them turned up.”
“You see, Mathilde.”
“But why should you think, Ernst, that it was my son?”
“I wanted to be sure, madam. Something might have happened. I ascertained their address from the registry office. So I went there, madam.…”
“Ernst, be sure to have a bath immediately and put on fresh linen.”
“Yes, Excellency. The young gentleman has not been seen since this morning. And the girl has been turned out of doors because the rent hadn’t been paid. She was still standing in the doorway.”
Frau Pagel stood up suddenly. Once more she was full of decision, energetic and unyielding.
“Thank you, Ernst. You have reassured me. Excuse me, dear Betty, for leaving without ceremony, but I must go home at once. I have the feeling that Wolfgang is sitting there waiting for me, full of despair. Something must have happened. O God, and Minna is also out! Well, he still has the key of the flat. Excuse me, I’m quite confused, dear Betty.”
“Manners and deportment, dear Mathilde! Deportment in every situation of life! Naturally you should have stayed at home on such an afternoon; of course he’s waiting for you. I, myself, wouldn’t have gone out on such a day. And above all—please, Mathilde, one moment, you simply can’t run off like that—be firm. No false kindness. Above all give him no money, not a penny. Board and lodging and clothes—that’s all right. But no money; he’ll only lose it at play. Mathilde—Mathilde! Go. Don’t stand on ceremony. Listen, Ernst.…”
The Thumann woman of the upper classes talks on and on.…
VIII
The dog slept, the cat slept, Georgenkirchstrasse slept.
Petra Ledig stood in the shadow of the doorway leading to the courtyard. The street vibrated in the merciless white heat; the hard light hurt her eyes; what she looked at seemed to lose its outlines and dissolve. She shut her eyes, and her head was filled with darkness shot through with aching flashes. She heard clocks strike the hour—it was good that the time passed. At first she had thought she must go somewhere or do something, but as she felt the moments slip away in a daze, she knew that she need only stand and wait. He must come, he might come any moment, he was bringing money. Then they would set out. Round the corner was a baker’s, next to a butcher’s. She imagined she was biting into a roll; it crackled, its crisp amber shell breaking, splinters of crust round the edge, and the inside white and spongy.
Now intruded red objects; she tried to recognize them, which she could do with shut eyes, for they were within her brain, not without: small round circles with reddish spots. What could they be? And suddenly she knew—they were strawberries. Of course, they had moved on; she was at a greengrocer’s. The strawberries lay in a basket. They smelled fresh—oh, how fresh they smelled. The strawberries lay on green leaves which were cool, too.… Everything was very cool and very fresh, with the sound of water also clear and cool.…
She tore herself away from her fantasy with an effort, but the water ran so insistently, and splashed down in such a way that it seemed to have something to say to her. Slowly she opened her eyes, slowly she recognized the doorway in which she was still standing, the vibrating street—and at last saw the bowler-hatted man who was saying something to her, an elderly man with sallow face and yellow-gray mutton-chop whiskers.
“What do you say?” she asked with a great effort, which she had to repeat because at first only a tiny unintelligible sound came from her parched mouth.
Many had passed her while she stood there. If they did notice the figure in the shadow of the open door they only hurried on all the quicker. It was a poor district in a starving age, and everywhere, at any hour of the day, stood women, girls, widows, miserable bodies rigged up in the most ridiculous rags, hunger and misery in their faces. To find a buyer for that miserable body was the last hope of the war widows done out of their pensions; working-class women whose husbands, even the soberest and most industrious, were tricked out of their wages by every devaluation of the mark; girls, some almost children, who could no longer witness the misery of their younger brothers and sisters. Every day, every hour, every minute, they slammed the doors of wretched hovels in which hunger was their mate and worry their bedfellow; they slammed doors behind them in finality and said: “Now I will do it. Why preserve myself for a greater misery, the next influenza epidemic, the medical officer and the bone house? Everything flows, hurries on, makes haste, changes—and am I supposed to keep myself?”