“My ten thousand marks,” said the forester in a trembling voice, “which I lent you on your farm was good prewar money—it took me twenty years to scrape it together. And on the last rent day you gave me a bit of paper—I still have it at home in a drawer. Not a stamp or a nail have I been able to buy with it.”
Kniebusch could not help himself; this time it was not the infirmity of age but an honest grief which brought the tears to his eyes. He was looking at Haase, who slowly rubbed his hands together between his knees and was just about to answer when a curt voice from the sofa called “Forester!”
The forester wheeled round, torn from his grief and entreaty. “Yes, Herr Lieutenant?”
“Matches, forester.”
The Lieutenant had finished eating. He had soaked up the last smear of fat from his plate, swallowed the last dregs of coffee. And now he lay stretched out on Haase’s sofa in his muddy boots, his eyes shut. A cigarette in his mouth, he demanded a light.
The forester gave it him. With the first puff of smoke the Lieutenant looked straight into the tearful eyes of the old man. “Well, what’s the matter?” he asked. “I almost believe you’re crying, Kniebusch?”
“It’s only the smoke, Herr Lieutenant,” replied the embarrassed forester.
“Well, that’s all right, then,” said the Lieutenant, shutting his eyes and turning over.
“I really don’t know why I listen to your eternal bleating, Kniebusch,” declared Haase. “According to the mortgage deed you’re to get two hundred marks. Last time I gave you a thousand-mark note, and because you had no change I let you keep the lot.”
“I couldn’t buy a nail with it,” repeated the forester doggedly.
“And this time I won’t be hard on you, either. I’ve already got a ten-thousand-mark note ready for you, and you needn’t give me any change. I’m like that, although ten thousand marks are as much as the entire mortgage.”
“But, Haase!” cried the forester. “That’s simply adding insult to injury. You know quite well that this ten-thousand-mark note is worth much less than a thousand marks six months ago. And I gave you my good money!” Grief almost broke his heart.
“What has that to do with me?” cried Haase angrily. “Did I turn your good money into bad? You must apply to the authorities in Berlin—it isn’t my fault. What’s written is written.”
“I only ask for justice,” begged the forester. “I’ve saved for twenty years, denying myself everything, and now you offer me a bum-wiper in exchange.”
“So?” said Haase venomously. “You say that, Kniebusch? What about the year of the drought when I couldn’t scrape the money together? Who said: ‘What’s written is written’? And what about the time when fat pigs cost eighteen marks per hundredweight and I said: ‘The interest is too high, you must reduce it’? Who answered: ‘Money is money, and if you don’t pay, then I’ll distrain on you’? Who said that? Was it you or somebody else?”
“But that was quite different, Haase,” said the forester dejectedly. “There was very little in it, really, but today you don’t want to give me anything at all. I don’t ask you to give me the full value, but if you gave me twenty hundredweights of rye instead of the two hundred marks—”
“Twenty hundredweights of rye!” Haase laughed loudly. “I believe you’ve gone mad. Twenty hundredweights of rye! That’s more than twenty million marks.”
“And yet not nearly as much as you ought to pay me,” insisted the forester. “In peace time it would be nearer thirty hundredweights.”
“Yes, in peace time,” said the magistrate, quite ruffled, for he realized that he could not easily rid himself of the forester, who now seriously threatened his purse. “But we haven’t got peace now, but In-fla-tion—and everyone must look after himself. Anyway, Kniebusch, I’ve had quite enough of your eternal bleating. You’re also for ever gossiping about us in the village, and not long ago you said at the baker’s that the magistrate didn’t pay his interest, but could afford to eat roast goose. Don’t argue, Kniebusch—you did say it; I hear everything. But tomorrow I’ll cycle to Meienburg and I’ll send you your interest, through my solicitor, two hundred marks exactly, and in addition you’ll get notice of repayment of the mortgage, and on New Year’s Eve you shall get your money, ten thousand marks exactly—and I don’t care how little you can buy with it. Yes, I’ll do that, Kniebusch, for I’ve had enough of your eternal moan about your savings. I’ll do it, you see.…”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind, Haase,” came a sharp voice from the sofa, “and it will have to do.” The Lieutenant was sitting upright, wide awake, the cigarette still alight between his lips. “On the last day of the month you’ll give the forester his twenty hundredweights of rye, and we’ll draw up a contract in writing in which you bind yourself to make the same payment as long as this muck called money is current.”
“No, Herr Lieutenant, I won’t do it,” said the magistrate resolutely. “You can’t order me to. Anything else, but not that. If I tell this to the Major—”
“He’ll give you a kick in the behind and throw you out. Or put you up against a wall as a traitor—everything is possible, Haase. Look here, my man,” cried the Lieutenant briskly, jumping up and buttonholing the magistrate. “You know our aims and objects, yet you, a veteran soldier, want to take advantage up to the last moment of the swinish actions of the scum in Berlin. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Haase.” He went back to the table, took another cigarette and bawled: “A light, forester!”
Kniebusch, a thousandfold relieved and cringingly grateful, rushed up to him. Giving the Lieutenant a light he whispered: “It ought to be written down also that the mortgage can’t be terminated. Otherwise he’ll pay me off with the rotten money—and it’s all my savings.” Self-pity overwhelmed him, gratitude at this unexpected rescuer made him abject. Kniebusch wept again.
The Lieutenant observed this with distaste. “Kniebusch, old water-tap,” he said, “clear out—or else I won’t say another word. Do you think I care about you? You and your miserable cash mean nothing to me. It’s the Cause; the Cause must be kept clean.”
The bewildered forester went over to the window. Wasn’t his case as clear as daylight? Why must he be snapped at?
The Lieutenant turned to the magistrate. “Well, what do you say about it, Haase?” he asked, puffing at his cigarette.
“Herr Lieutenant, why should I be placed in a worse position than the others? In this district they are all clearing off their mortgages. And Kniebusch is not a person who deserves special consideration.”
This time the lieutenant replied, “It isn’t a question of Kniebusch: it’s you, Haase. You can’t fill your pockets through the swindling of the Berliners and overthrow them because of those same swindles. That’s as clear as daylight; every child understands that; you understand it, too. And in there,” he tapped Haase lightly on his waistcoat and the magistrate draw away uneasily, “in there you know quite well that you’re in the wrong.”
A terrible struggle was taking place in the other’s heart. In the course of a long, strenuous life he had learned to hold on to what he had got, but he had not learned how to be generous. At last he said slowly: “I’ll write that I won’t repay the mortgage and that I’ll pay him the value of ten hundredweights of rye every six months.… The farm doesn’t yield more, Herr Lieutenant, times are bad.”
“Shame!” said the Lieutenant in a low voice and looking very gravely at the old man. “You don’t want to burden your conscience with the entire guilt, but you’ll profit by the smaller guilt all right, eh? Look at me, man! I’m not much to write home about, but there is one thing … I possess nothing at all, Haase; for five years I’ve possessed nothing except what I stand up in. Sometimes I get my pay, sometimes I don’t. It’s all one to me. If you believe in a cause, then you give up everything for it—or you don’t believe in it. If that’s the case, we’ve no more to say to one another.”