He did not, however. Silent and flurried, he buttoned up his braces, fumbled with his waistcoat and jacket …
At the door Madam Po was wailing. “Herr Pagel! Herr Pagel! I don’t understand you! You’re an educated man an’ we always got on so well, an’ me wanting to give a roll and a pot of coffee to your girl, only Ida wouldn’t stand for it.… Besides, everything was Ida’s fault, I’d got nothing against you. Lor’, now he sets my place on fire!”
Pagel, paying no attention to her, had been standing by the window, absent-mindedly watching the girl putting on her blouse in a great hurry. Then it occurred to him that he was no longer smoking. Lighting a cigarette, he eyed the burning match in his fingers. Beside him was the curtain, the repulsive, dingy curtain which he had always hated. He touched it with the match. The hem scorched and writhed, then burst into flame.
The girl and the Thumann woman screamed, the man made a step toward him, then hesitated.
“So!” said Pagel and crumpled the curtain up, thereby extinguishing the flame. “This is my room. What do I owe you, Frau Thumann? I’ll pay to the end of the month. Here!”
He gave her some money, any odd amount, a couple of notes, it didn’t matter. He was putting the wad back into his pocket when he noticed the girl looking at it with a pathetically covetous look. Supposing she knew, he thought with satisfaction, that this was only one of six such packets—and the least valuable at that.
“There!” he said to the girl and held it out.
She looked at the money, then at him, and he realized that she did not believe him. “All right, then,” he said indifferently and put the money away. “You’re a fool. If you’d taken it you could have kept it. Now you won’t get anything.”
He went to the door. “I’m going to the police, Frau Thumann. In an hour I’ll be back with my wife. See that there’s something for supper.”
“Certainly, Herr Pagel. But you haven’t paid for the curtain yet. A quarter of an hour ago a copper was looking for you. I told him you had ‘opped it.”
“Good. I’ll go there now.”
She hurried after him. “And, Herr Pagel, please don’t take it amiss. You’ll hear about it any’ow at the station. I only said you were a bit behind with the rent, and straightaway they made me sign something about fraud. But I’ll take it back, Herr Pagel, I didn’t mean it. I’ll go at once to the police and take it back. I didn’t want to do it, but he made me. I’ll be there right away. I must first get rid of the girl. A fool like her wouldn’t never have earned the rent, and you’ve seen what sort of a gent that was, Herr Pagel, with a dickey on …”
Pagel was already descending the stairs; the devil takes the hindmost, and so it was quite in keeping that Frau Thumann had laid a charge on account of fraud. It didn’t matter to him, but as regards Petra …
He returned. Madam Po had started to report the events to a neighbor on the landing. “If you’re not at the police station in twenty minutes, Frau Thumann,” he said, “there’ll be the devil of a row.”
The yellow secretary at the police station had had a bad day. It was a severe bilious attack, as he had feared in getting up that morning. Dull pressure in the region of his gall-bladder and a feeling of nausea had warned him. He knew quite well, and the surgeon had told him often enough, that he ought to report sick and undergo a course of treatment. But what married man nowadays could afford to let his family depend on sick benefits which lagged so far behind the devaluation?
The excitement of the Gubalke case had brought on a real bilious colic. He had hardly been able to finish the records for the transfer of the prisoners to Alexanderplatz at seven o’clock, and now he was huddled in the lavatory while they were calling for him outside. He could have screamed with pain. Of course he could go home if he was ill; no superintendent, and his least of all, would have any objection; but one couldn’t leave one’s duty so suddenly, especially at this hour when the heaviest tasks of the police started. The shops had closed, throwing thousands of businessmen and employees on the streets; hundreds of restaurants displayed their illuminated signs, and the lust for amusement swept people off their feet. He would stick it till he was relieved at ten o’clock.
He was sitting at his desk again. With some anxiety he noticed that, although the bilious attack and the pain had stopped, their place was taken by a state of utter irritation. Everything annoyed him, and he looked almost with hate at the pale spongy face of a street-vendor who, without having a license, had sold some toilet soap of dubious origin out of a suitcase and, when reprimanded by a policeman, had started a row. I must pull myself together, thought the secretary. I mustn’t let myself go. I’m not to look at him like that.
“It is forbidden to offer goods for sale in the street without a hawker’s license,” he said for the tenth time, as gently as possible.
“Everything is forbidden,” the hawker shouted. “You ruin a chap. Here you’re only allowed to starve to death.”
“I don’t make the laws,” said the secretary.
“But you’re paid to carry out the lousy laws, you and your fat job,” the man shouted. Just behind him stood a good-looking lad in a field-gray uniform, with an open, intelligent face. He gave the secretary strength to endure such abuse without exploding. “Where did you get the soap?” he asked.
“Find out!” the vendor bawled. “Why must you interfere with everything? You only want to ruin the likes of us, you corpse-maggot. When we’re dead you’ll have a good feed.” And his abuse did not cease even while a policeman was pushing him toward the cells.
The secretary shut the lid of the soap case sadly and put it on his desk. “Yes?” he said to the young man in the field-gray uniform, who, frowning and with his chin thrust out, had watched the hawker being taken away. His face, the secretary now noticed, was not so frank as he had first thought it; there was defiance in it and foolish obstinacy. The official was familiar with the expression which some men assume whenever a policeman uses force against a civilian. Such men, the born kickers against the pricks, see red, particularly when they have been drinking a little.
This young man had himself under control, however. With a sigh of relief he looked away as soon as the iron door closed on the corridor. He jerked one shoulder in the tightly fitting tunic, went up to the desk and said in a challenging but otherwise reasonable voice: “My name is Pagel. Wolfgang Pagel.”
The secretary waited, but nothing further was forthcoming. “Yes?” he said. “What do you want?”
“You are expecting me,” replied the young man angrily. “Pagel. Pagel from Georgenkirchstrasse.”
“Why, yes,” said the secretary. “Yes, of course. We sent a man along. We should like to have a talk with you, Herr Pagel.”
“And your man has compelled my landlady to make a charge against me.”
“Not compelled. Hardly compelled,” the secretary corrected. “We have no special interest in accepting charges. We’re stuffed up with them.” He was determined to keep on good terms with this young man.
“Nevertheless you’ve arrested my wife for no reason,” said the young man vehemently.
“Not your wife,” the secretary corrected again. “An unmarried girl, Petra Ledig, isn’t that so?”
“We wanted to marry at lunch time,” said Pagel flushing. “Our banns were put up at the registrar’s.”
“But the arrest didn’t take place till this evening. So you weren’t married at midday?”
“No. But we can soon change that. I had no money this morning.”
“I understand,” said the secretary slowly. “But an unmarried girl for all that!” his gall trouble made him add.
He looked at the green ink-stained baize before him, then selected a sheet from the pile of papers on his left. He avoided glancing at the young man, but again he could not resist adding: “And not arrested without a reason. No.”