He would carry the picture as it was. He must get away before it rained.
But as he crossed the threshold of the room to the accompaniment of that wild raving voice, the old servant, that silly goose whom one could never please, burst forth in his very face: “Shame on you! Shame on you!”
He shrugged his shoulders. He had done it for Petra; it was Minna’s opinion also that he ought to have done something for the girl. But never mind, let them talk.
He was out of the flat, the door was closed. Once he had chipped a corner off its porcelain name plate. He went downstairs.
How much would he get for the picture?
IV
On this twenty-sixth day of July, 1923, the divorced Countess Mutzbauer (née Fräulein Fischmann) wished to go into the country to have a look at some farms with her present friend, a Berlin cattle dealer by the name of Quarkus.
Quarkus was a man in his late forties, stocky, with dark curly thinning hair, fleshy forehead, and a roll of fat at the back of the neck; a married man for almost a quarter of a century, and the father of five children. At first he had regarded the inflation favorably, since it had made him richer and richer, a few months changing a man with a weekly turnover of a wagon-load of pigs and two dozen cattle into a wholesale dealer whose buyers traveled into South Germany and even into Holland. Before the cattle, paid for in advance, arrived in Berlin, indeed even before they were dispatched, their value had risen twofold, threefold, and even fivefold, and Quarkus had always proved to be right when he had told his buyers: “Pay what the people ask you—it’s little enough.”
At first, raking in the money had given Herr Quarkus undiluted pleasure, creating in him a distaste for the Schultheiss pothouses, the Bötzow taverns and the Aschinger saloons; and he had become a generous, even popular, client of all the bars in the old Friedrichstadt and the new West End, asserting with conviction that one could eat really decently in only three of all Berlin’s restaurants. Thus, when it came about that a genuine countess embraced him, he felt that no earthly desire of his remained unfulfilled.
But the richer he grew and the less importance money held for him, the more thoughtful became cattle dealer Quarkus. His unscrupulous optimism which hitherto had relied, without worrying about the future, on the continued fall of the mark, became dashed at the sight of this currency leaping round the dollar in bounds which would have carried a flea over Ulm Cathedral.
“There’s a limit to everything,” he muttered when he learned that his pigs had brought him in twentyfold the purchase price. At a time when hundreds of thousands did not know where to find the money for a piece of bread, he became sleepless with the worry of how to invest his.
An expression whispered on many sides—real values—reached his ear. Nobody can free himself from his early training. The lad Emil (the name Quarkus had attained significance for the surrounding world only from his twenty-fifth year onwards) had had to drive one cow along many German highroads, and look after three pigs; he had been a cattle drover before he became a cattle dealer. Longingly the thin hungry youth had looked at the farmhouses beside the highroad, where the doors emitted such an alluring smell of fried potatoes and bacon. Whether it hailed, rained, snowed, or was cold enough to freeze your very eyelashes, the farms always sprawled comfortably along the roadside, their broad thatched or tiled roofs promising protection, warmth and comfort. Even the ox which Emil Quarkus drove could notice this; when it rained it lifted its head, stretched out its tail and lowed yearningly for the farmyards.
What for the boy had been the epitome of all security and comfort, now became a refuge for the man. At a time when the mark was bounding, leaping, crashing, nothing could be more secure than a farm—excepting five or ten farms. And Quarkus was resolved to buy them.
Countess Mutzbauer, née Fräulein Fischmann (which she did not naturally divulge to her friend Quarkus) was, of course, more in favor of an estate with a castle, terrace and racing stable. But about this Quarkus was adamant. “I have bought enough cattle from manors,” he said. “I don’t want to buy their worries, too.”
He was sure that if he went to a farm with a bag full of notes—better still with a trunk—asked to buy a cow, bought ten, threw his money around and bragged about it and used it as a bait, then no owner would be able to resist him. And after buying ten cows he would buy the cowhouse, the straw, the land on which the straw grew, and ultimately the whole farm. And when he told the owner that he could remain and carry on with the farming, doing what he liked with the produce, that farmer would think him cracked and would find other sellers for him, more than he wanted. Till the day dawned when the mark—well, nobody could conceive what the mark would be like on that day—it baffled imagination. Whatever happened, however, the farm would be there. The farms, rather.
Such were, roughly, Quarkus’s reflections as frequently outlined to the Countess. Actually, since the manor had been turned down, she took very little interest in the matter, but she was too wise to be disinterested enough to let her friend travel by himself. It was always better to be on the spot, for vulgar women, to whom money was as necessary as dung to the dung-beetle, were to be found everywhere. Moreover, if he bought ten farms, an eleventh might perhaps be thrown in as her pickings; and though the idea of her owning a farm was about as reasonable as her possessing a locomotive, yet it could always be sold—in fact, one could sell anything. (Countess Mutzbauer had already sold, in turn, three cars which she had been given by her friend, and had treated him to the magnificent explanation: “You’re too much of a gentleman, Quarkus, to expect me to put up with such an old-fashioned car.” And he was really too much of a gentleman—besides being uninterested in such points.)
The notion of the eleventh farm, however, had reminded the Countess that her chambermaid, Sophie, came from the country and toward midday, having slept thoroughly, she rang for her and conducted the following conversation:
“Sophie, you come from the country, don’t you?”
“Yes, Frau Countess, but I don’t like it.”
“Do you come from a farm?”
“No, Frau Countess, from a manor.”
“You see, Sophie, I told Herr Quarkus that he should buy a manor. But he says he only wants a farm.”
“Yes, Frau Countess, my Hans was just like that, too. When he had enough money for Habel and partridges, then he only wanted Aschinger with pea soup and bacon; men are like that.”
“So you, too, Sophie, think that a manor is much better?”
“Of course, Frau Countess. A manor is much bigger, and when it belongs to you, you don’t need to work yourself but employ people.”
“On a farm one has to work?”
“Terribly hard, Frau Countess; and work which ruins the appearance.”
Hastily the Countess decided to forgo the eleventh farm and accept instead the gift of a diamond ring. And with that decision she lost all personal interest in the trip or the purchase, and thus any reason for taking Sophie with her as adviser.
“Listen, Sophie, in case Herr Quarkus should ask you, don’t tell him that. That’s no need to dissuade him; it only spoils his pleasure and won’t stop him buying.”
“Just like my Hans,” said Sophie with a sigh, reflecting sadly that the police would never have nabbed Hans Liebschner if he had followed her advice.
“All right, Sophie. Then everything is settled. I knew you understood all about the country. Herr Quarkus and I are going to buy a farm, and I thought of buying one for myself. Then I would have taken you with me. But if a farm is no use …”
Too late Sophie realized that she had spoken too soon. A trip by car into the country with the rich Quarkus would have been very agreeable. She changed her tune. “Of course, Frau Countess, there are all sorts of farms—”