Wolf Among Wolves by Hans Fallada Read Free Book Online Page A

benignly for a long time and was extinguished suddenly. He was extinguished. Let us await the son. A spark of hope, the promise of a fire. Alone no longer.
    The woman at the window, an old woman now, turned around. Certainly there was the picture. Young Woman at a Window, Waiting.
    The old woman put the stub of her cigar in the ash tray.
    “I have the feeling that the silly boy will really come today. It is time he came.”
    VII
    Frau Thumann, spouse of the bricklayer, Wilhelm Thumann, bloated and flabby, in loose garments, with a bloated, flabby face which nevertheless wore a soured expression—the Thumann woman shuffled with the inevitable chamber pot across the corridor to the toilet on the half-flight of stairsbelow; a toilet serving three families. She was entirely without scruples concerning the harboring of girls of the worst reputation and their hangers-on (at present, temperamental Ida from Alexanderplatz was living in the room opposite the Pagels), but she was full of sanitary niceties about the toilet.
    “And now they’ve discovered them bacticilli, dearie. They could have let ’em alone, but as they’ve gone and done it, and we ain’t got the most wonderful people here either, and sometimes when I go to the toilet I c’n hardly fetch my breath, and who knows what’s flying about! An’ once there was a blackbeetle there which looked at me in such a nasty way.… No, trust me, dearie, I know bugs when I see ’em. You can’t tell me anything about them, dearie—I was born and brought up among bugs. Since they have been discovered, though, I says to my Willem: ‘Pot or no pot, health’s the most important thing in life.’ I says to him: ‘Be careful! The beasts jump at you like tigers and ‘fore you know where you are, you bring in a whole microcosmetic of ’em.’ But I tell you, dearie, we’re made in the rummiest way. Since I’ve kept to the pot I’m running about with it all day. Not that I’m complaining, but it is a bit funny. Our young gentleman who’s got the little pale dark girl—she isn’t his wife, but she imagines she will be one day, and some of them relish their imagination like a cake from Hilbrich’s—he always calls me Madam Po. Only she tells him not to, which I find decent of her. But he can call me what he likes, for all I care. What does he say it for? ’Cause he likes his little joke. And why does he like his little joke? ’Cause he’s young. When you’re young you don’t believe in nothing, neither in parsons, which I don’t either, nor in these bacticilli. And what happens? Just as I rush about with the pot, so they hurry to the Health Committee, but what with, I don’t care to say. We all know what it is, though some of ’em call it only a catarrh. And now, silly as they are, they suddenly become wise to it. And as regards the catarrh, don’t they wish they could sneeze and someone would say to them, ‘God bless you’! But it’s too late then, and that’s why I’d rather trot about with my pot.”
    So the Thumann woman, frowsy and voluble, with an acid complexion, was shuffling with her pot along the corridor.
    The door of the Pagels’ room opened and revealed young Wolfgang Pagel, tall, with broad shoulders and slim hips, fair and cheerful, in a field-gray tunic with narrow red stripes. It was a material which, even after five years’ wear, still looked good, with a silver gleam like the leaves of the lime tree.
    “Good morning, Frau Thumann,” he said quite pleasantly. “How about a little chat about coffee?”
    “You! You!” said the Thumann woman indignantly, pushing past with half-averted face. “Don’t you see I’m busy?”
    “I beg your pardon. It was an urgent inquiry as the result of hunger. We’ll gladly wait. It’s only about eleven o’clock.”
    “Don’t bother to wait till twelve, then,” she replied, and stood in the doorway, waving her pot in a portentous manner. “The new dollar comes out at twelve and, as the man in