Wolf Among Wolves (84 page)

He looked at the sweaty old man, whose forehead was covered with perspiration. The news waiting for you will make you still hotter, he thought, politely promising to ask Eva whether Violet’s detention might not be relaxed so far as to permit her to visit her grandparents.

“You’re looking thin and pale, Vi,” said her grandfather. “Well, come along, give your old granddad a kiss. Here, not so fast, must dry myself a bit first.” And he drew out a huge handkerchief, gaily printed with the insignia of St. Hubert. The Rittmeister looked away indignantly. It was revolting that this gross old man with printed cotton handkerchiefs could kiss his granddaughter and yet tease and worry him with a wretched lease. He gazed into the pines, where birds fluttered now and again in the sunny cones, and after a while he said dryly:

“We must be getting along now.”

“Of course you must,” said the old man gaily. He was by no means unaware of his son-in-law’s feelings, often deriving an unsullied pleasure from his “finicky fineness.”

“Well, one last big hug for your granddad, Vi!” And he cried out in the drunken tones of a Berlin sausage seller: “They’re warm, and fat too.…”

“Now please, Vi!” ordered the Rittmeister sharply. One couldn’t be with the old man for five minutes without getting cross with him!

“Run along, Vi. I’m not fine enough for your father. Queer though, my farm’s fine enough for him!” And with this Parthian shot the old man plodded off, chuckling with pleasure.

For a while the Rittmeister walked along in silence—he was getting annoyed again and he didn’t want that—he couldn’t stand being annoyed. With an effort he banished all thought of his father-in-law and brooded about the Horch car which he was so anxious to have. He had wanted to buy it this autumn after the first threshing, but Studmann had, of course, destroyed this hope by his long-winded calculations. And why? Just because that old miser had swindled him with a fraudulent lease!

“Your grandfather always tries to annoy me, Violet!” he complained.

“Grandpa doesn’t mean it that way, Papa,” said Violet consolingly. “Papa, I wanted to ask you something …”

“Oh, doesn’t he! He means even more than he says!” Irritably the Rittmeister slashed at the weeds bordering the path. “Yes, what did you want to ask?”

“Irma has written to me, Papa,” Violet lied boldly. “Just think, Gustel Gallwitz wants to marry!”

“Really?” asked the Rittmeister without interest, for the Gallwitzes lived in Pomerania and were in no way related to the Prackwitzes. “Whom?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Someone or other—you don’t know him, a lieutenant. But what I wanted to ask, Papa …”

“In the Reichswehr?”

“I don’t know. I think so. But, Papa …”

“Then he must have means. Or the Gallwitzes are giving her a dowry.… He certainly won’t be able to live on the miserable pittance he draws as a lieutenant.”

“But, Papa,” cried Vi in despair, since she saw her father continually going off on the wrong track, “that’s not what I mean. I want to ask something quite different. Gustel is no older than I am!”

“Well—what of it?” asked the Rittmeister, not understanding.

“But, Papa!” Vi knew very well that she would not have been allowed to carry on such a conversation with her mother, who would have smelled a rat at once. But Papa never noticed anything. “Gustel is only just fifteen! Is one allowed to marry at fifteen?”

“No!” declared the Rittmeister firmly. “Absolutely impossible! That’s seduction of min—” He bit his lips. “No, it’s not allowed. It even says so in the penal code.”

“What’s in the penal code, Papa?” cried Vi, startled.

“That little kids like you ought not to know about such things,” concluded the Rittmeister with a somewhat false heartiness. It had occurred to him just in time that Frau Eva would have been very displeased at this conversation, suspecting as she did that Violet was no longer so innocent as her parents had believed. So he added darkly: “And fellows who meddle with fifteen-year-old girls are scoundrels and go to prison—that’s in the penal code.”

“But the man might not know she is only fifteen!” cried Violet excitedly.

The Rittmeister stopped and looked at his daughter. “Whoever meddles with a girl without even knowing how old she is, is already a scoundrel. One doesn’t defend fellows like that, Violet. Now come along.”

They went on. The Rittmeister was thinking again of his father-in-law and the Horch car—there must be some way of getting it. All his acquaintances had cars; only he …

“But, Papa,” Violet began again cautiously, “he wants to marry Gustel! So the marriage must be possible, even if she is only fifteen.”

“All right, if it’s possible then it is possible—that’s his worry!” said the Rittmeister crossly. “I think you have to apply to the Home Secretary or something. Anyway, I wouldn’t let my daughter do it.”

“I wouldn’t want to, Papa,” laughed Violet. “Do you think I would? Heavens, Papa, I’m so glad to be able to walk in the forest with you. I think all men are terrible except you!” She hung on his arm and nestled against him.

“There, Vi, I’ve told your mother ten times already that your mind isn’t on men yet!” he said with pleasure, giving her arm a strong squeeze.

“Oh, Papa, you’re hurting me! But, Papa, I’m awfully interested in this about Gustel. If Irma writes it, it must be true. Tell me all about it, Papa, all about the laws, and what they have to do.”

“Now, what next, Vi! You women are all the same; when it’s a question of marriage you become as inquisitive as monkeys.”

“Monkeys, Papa! I’m not a monkey. But if the Home Secretary says yes, must the father also say yes?”

“What do you mean?” The Rittmeister was getting more and more fogged about the relevance of this cursed Pomeranian marriage. “It’s the father who first has to ask the Home Secretary for permission to marry!”

“The father? Not Gustel?”

“But she’s only fifteen, child; she’s not yet of age.”

“Supposing he makes an application to the Home Secretary—the lieutenant, I mean?”

“Gustel can never marry without the consent of old Gallwitz. I’m amazed that he gave it!”

“Never, Papa?”

“Well, at least not before her twenty-first birthday.”

“Why not before? A lot of girls marry at seventeen or eighteen, Papa.”

“Heavens, Vi, you’re driving me crazy! Those girls have obtained their father’s consent.”

“And without it …”

“Without it,” cried the Rittmeister, “no decent girl marries at all. Understand, Vi?”

“Why, of course, Papa,” she said innocently. “I’m just asking you because you know everything and no one can explain things to me as well as you can. Not even Mamma.”

“Really, Vi,” said the Rittmeister, half placated, “you’ve been asking enough today to last a lifetime.”

“Because I want to know everything about Gustel! You see, Irma writes that old Gallwitz isn’t so pleased about it, but the lieutenant is so much in love, and Gustel too—and they want to marry whatever happens. So it has to be possible, Papa!”

“Yes, Vi,” said her father. “If she’s a bad and disobedient child, she’ll run away with him and go to England. In England there’s a blacksmith, and he can marry them. But it would be a scandalous marriage—the girl would never be able to return to her parents’ house, and the lieutenant would have to take off his uniform and could never be an officer again.”

“But would they be properly married, Papa?” asked Vi sweetly.

“Yes, properly married!” cried her father, red with rage. “But without their parents’ blessing!” (The Rittmeister never went to church.) “The parents’ blessing builds up a house for the children, but the father’s curse tears it down, as it says somewhere in the Bible.” (The Rittmeister had never looked at a Bible since he had been confirmed.) “And I forbid you, Vi, ever to write to these silly geese who put such stupid thoughts into your head! You shall give me the letter as soon as we get home.”

“Yes, Papa,” said Vi obediently. “But I’ve already torn it up.”

“The cleverest thing you could have done!” growled her unsuspecting father.

The two went on in silence. The Rittmeister tried in vain to think about his Horch—disturbing thoughts kept intervening. Only when he turned his mind actively to the car’s inner arrangements and encountered the serious questions—upholstery or leather? and what color?—only then did he succeed in becoming calm again and able to walk with contentment through the beautiful sun-swept forest, at the side of a daughter who, thank Heaven, no longer asked questions.

And Violet was just as content. She knew at last what she had long wanted to know: that there was a possibility of marrying her Lieutenant. What her father had added about the parents’ curse and the taking off of the uniform did not affect this wonderful news in the least. She had always got round her father, and why not after marriage? And her Fritz was so clever; he could become anything and did not need to be a lieutenant. Since she would one day inherit, as the only child, everything here, he could just as well settle down in Neulohe and help Papa, instead of always riding round the country on a bicycle. She really didn’t know which way to turn, but didn’t notice. Her whole future seemed like a mirror garlanded with may-branches, a mirror in which she saw only her own happy face. Even if the word scoundrel had fallen on her ears for the second time today, that did not bother her. One could apply here a proverb from Jutta von Kuckhoff’s collection and say that love makes even a broomstick green: since he had become a scoundrel through love of her, she forgave him his scoundrelism. Nay, she admired the hero who, for her sake, feared neither penal code nor prison.

But all this was only vague and without any fixed form. What she saw more clearly in her daydream was the flight over land and sea to the distant kingdom of England. Suddenly she was glad that she had continued to learn English with her mother, for now she would be able to converse with the people there. And she was glad there was no more war, for then she could not have got married to him in that country.

The marrying blacksmith! Strange that it should be a smith! And she saw his smithy just like the farm smithy in Neulohe. Under a small roof were tied the horses that were to be shod, and to the right of the door leaned the huge cartwheels on which tires were to be fixed, and through the door could be seen the open fire which glowed red under the squeaking bellows. And then the smith came out, tall and dark, with a leather apron, and over the anvil Violet von Prackwitz and Lieutenant Fritz were married.

Oh, this wretched smith of Gretna Green—that it had to be a smith! Had he been a chimney sweep or a tailor he would never have caused such mischief in the heads of two generations or been the last hope of all desperate young lovers. But a smith! In this bureaucratic world of documents he appeared, to all who could not obtain documents, like a warrior of old—iron and blood, flesh and anvil-song, who married according to divine law, not according to a documentary one. He had turned so many heads, this marriage maker who grew fat on fees—why shouldn’t he also turn Vi’s? She saw the smithy and she saw the smith. He could marry, and he married. There would be no more secrecy, no desperate waiting, no confinement to her room, no shameless servant Räder and no cheeky Herr Pagel—there would only be Fritz, morning, noon and evening, day as well as night, week-days as well as Sundays.…

These dreams were so beautiful, and they had trapped Vi so completely, as if in a warm protective net, so that she no longer thought about the path or her father, but walked along quite unselfconsciously, softly humming to herself. With the daughter it was the Lieutenant; with the father it was the Horch car. Both dreamed dreams according to their age.

And thus they both received the same shock when a man stepped out of a bush, a man in a rather shabby field-gray uniform, a steel helmet on his head, a gun under his arm, and on his belt not only a holster but also half a dozen hand grenades.

This man gave the peremptory order: “Stand still!”

The Rittmeister’s desire for solitude had led him unawares deeper and deeper into the forest; father and daughter had long ago left the beaten track and were now on a kind of stalking path in an unfrequented part called the Black Dale. Here, on the extreme edge of the Teschow forest preserve, it looked gloomy and wild; only seldom did the woodsmen come to clear up and thin out the trees. The otherwise almost flat country was here all undulation, humps between which were dark little valleys where springs trickled just strongly enough to survive the summer and form a morass in which the wild boars had their almost inaccessible retreats. The firs and pines towered high, all around blackberry bushes formed impassable thickets—there was nothing here even for poachers.

In the midst of this deep solitude there now stood a heavily armed man who, quite without any legal grounds, said to the son-in-law of its owner: “Stand still!” And said it discourteously, too.

On first being startled, Violet von Prackwitz had uttered a little cry. But now she stood there calm, though breathing deeply—something said to her that this soldier was connected with her Lieutenant, whom perhaps she might even get to see again after such a long separation.…

The Rittmeister, however, who had merely said “Well!” was not so angry as one would have thought at this “Stand still!” in a place where he himself should have been the one to give the order. The man who had spoken wore a uniform, and the Rittmeister did not. And if he subscribed to any tenet, it was to the one that a uniformed man gives orders to a civilian, any civilian. This tenet he had imbibed with his mother’s milk, his whole life as officer had proved its truth—and so he immediately halted, looked at the sentry and waited for what was to happen. (Silence was appropriate. Real civilians would naturally have asked questions; an old soldier kept his mouth shut and waited.)

He was right. When the man saw that the two showed no signs of resisting or escaping, he blew a little whistle—not too loudly, not too softly. Then he said quite pleasantly: “The Lieutenant will be here at once!”

If the Rittmeister hadn’t been so absorbed in this military procedure, so long missed, he would undoubtedly have been somewhat perplexed at his daughter. She turned red, she turned white, she seized his arm, she let it go again, she gulped, she almost laughed.… But he noticed nothing of this. He was pleased, as only an ex-officer can be, that he had, after all his civilian troubles, encountered military maneuvers. He looked at the sentry benevolently, and the sentry looked benevolently at the blushing girl.