In accordance with the warder’s instructions, they knotted the sheets like ropes around the parcel. The girl submitted willingly. She didn’t lose sight of the hand which held her salvation, the cocaine, the salt. “Please give it to me,” she murmured. “How can you be so cruel? It’s so beautiful.… I can’t stand it anymore.”
“There,” said the warder after a moment’s scrutiny. “That’ll do. Well, it’s really unnecessary because she’ll find out at once, but never mind, give her the salt.”
“Yes, the snow. Please, please, the snow!”
Hesitatingly, reluctantly, Petra held her palm with the salt on it under the Hawk’s nose. And witnessed, oddly moved, the change in that tormented face.
“Nearer,” the girl whispered with a compelling glance. “Hold it right under my nose.” She sniffed it in. “Oh, how good it is.” Her sharp contorted features smoothed themselves out, her eyelids sank. Where there had been dark hollows, soft flesh filled out the cheekbones. The deep furrows round her mouth vanished; the cracked lips became fuller; she breathed rhythmically. What bliss!
But it’s only salt, Petra thought, disturbed. Common cooking salt. But she believes in it and so it makes her young again. And a sudden thought-association made her think of Wolfgang, of Wolfgang Pagel, whom, as she now realized quite well, she had been expecting, minute by minute, the whole evening, in spite of everything. How did others see him?
“There, she’s starting again!” said the warder in an undertone.
The girl’s face, close to that of the kneeling Petra, changed frightfully. The mouth was a dark deep cavern; the eyes stared with rage and anger.
“You beasts, you swine!” she shrieked. “That’s not snow. You’ve cheated me. Oh—oh—oh!”
Her whole body struggled, her head reared up. The face became crimson, then blue, with her efforts to get free. “Let me go!” she screamed. “I’ll show you!”
Petra had recoiled—such hatred, such despair showed on the face which had been so contented only a moment ago.
“No fear, my girl,” said the warder. “That’ll hold you. Take care, you in blue, you’re the most sensible of the lot. Let her lie on the ground; don’t set her free whatever she says. And see that she doesn’t bash her head in on the stone floor, she’s quite capable of it. If she screams too loudly put a wet towel over her mouth, but don’t let her choke.”
“Take her out of this,” said Petra angrily. “I don’t want to do that. I’m no wardress. I don’t want to torture people.”
“Don’t be silly, you in blue,” said the warder imperturbably. “Are we torturing her? It’s the snow which does that. Did we make her an addict?”
“She ought to be in hospital,” said Petra indignantly.
“Do you think they’d give her snow there?” rejoined the warder. “She’s got to get rid of the craving in here or somewhere else. Is she still a human being? Have a look at her.”
And indeed the Hawk hardly looked human, a trembling, raging thing, sometimes full of fury and hate, sometimes weeping and despairing; at other moments beseeching as a child beseeches who believes that the person pleaded with can do everything.
“I’ll see if I can get her a sleeping draught from the sick ward,” said the ginger one reflectively. “But I don’t know whether there’s anybody there who has the key to the medicine chest. These are times, I can tell you.… So don’t depend on it!”
“You can always give her salt occasionally,” interposed the other. “She’ll be taken in by it at least a dozen times. People are like that. Well, good night.”
The door was pushed to, the lock groaned under the keys, the bolt grated. Petra sat down beside the patient, who with shut eyes was flinging her head from side to side, ceaselessly, quicker and quicker.… “Snow,” she whispered. “Snow, snow, good snow.…”
Again and again she’ll be taken in by salt, thought Petra gloomily. “People are like that!” He’s right, people are like that. But I don’t want to be like that anymore. No!
She looked at the door. The peep-hole blinked like an evil eye. Wolf won’t come, she thought resolutely. He has believed what they told him. I’ll not expect him any longer.
V
At the Manor in Neulohe the old people, the von Teschows, had supper every day punctually at seven o’clock. At half-past seven they finished, and the maids had only to wash up and tidy the kitchen, which, at the latest, would be finished by eight. As the old lady would remark: “Even a servant must have her free time in the evening.”
True, at eight-fifteen came evening prayers, which everybody in the Manor had to attend after a wash—except old Herr von Teschow who, of course, to his wife’s perpetual annoyance, had always, just at this very hour, an urgent, absolutely essential letter to write.
“No, this evening it’s really impossible, Belinde! And besides—for your sake I listen every blessed Sunday to what old Lehnich tells us from the pulpit. I must say it sounds quite nice, but it doesn’t give me any clear ideas, Belinde. And I don’t believe you get any, either. The only notion I get is that we shall one day be angels flying about in heaven, you and I, Belinde, in white shirts like the pictures in the big illustrated Bible …”
“You’re mocking again, Horst-Heinz.”
“God forgive me, not in the least. And I’ll meet my old Elias there, and he too will be flapping around and singing eternally, and then he’ll whisper to me: ‘Well, Geheimrat, you’re lucky. Had I told the Lord about your red wine and the wicked language you’ve used at times …’ ”
“True, Horst-Heinz, very true!”
“And all without any class distinction and on the most familiar footing, in a kind of nightshirt and with goose wings. Excuse me, Belinde, they really are goose wings. It ought to be swan’s wings, but swans and geese are very much the same.”
“Yes, go upstairs by all means, Horst-Heinz, and write your important business letters. I know you’ll only sneer—not at religion, but at me. Well, I don’t mind that; I can stand it. Perhaps it’s better so. Because if you really mocked at religion you would be an outcast forever and ever—but if you sneer at me you’re only being discourteous. And you can do that, for we’ve been married forty-two years and I’m thus quite used to a discourteous husband!”
With that the old lady bustled off to the chapel, leaving the old gentleman laughing on the landing. The deuce, I’ve got it again hot and strong, he thought. But she’s right—and I’ll go to one of her meetings tomorrow or the day after. It livens her up a bit, and once in a while one ought to do something for a wife, even though one’s been married for forty-two years. If only she wouldn’t get the hiccups as soon as she’s upset. It’s exactly like somebody getting a cannon at billiards—I can’t stand that clicking sound, and I can’t bear her hiccups—I keep on waiting for them. Well, I’ll do some of my accounts. I fancy my son-in-law pays much too little for the electric current …
With that the Geheimrat went upstairs to his study and three minutes later was wrapped in the smoke of a Brazilian cigar, immersed in his belligerent accounts, an old but incurable fighter. The accounts, however, were belligerent because he wanted them to assault his son-in-law with. Who, according to his father-in-law, paid much too little for everything; and according to himself, much too much. Electricity included.
Neulohe was not connected up with any area system, but generated its own current. The generating machine, an up-to-date crude-oil Diesel motor, with its batteries, stood in the Manor cellar, and because of this was not leased to the son-in-law, who was the chief user, but retained by the old gentleman for himself, although he burned only “three miserable lamps in his old hut.” The arrangement about the price of the current was also quite simple: each party had to pay his share of the cost according to the amount consumed.