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

the greengrocer’s cellar said, it’ll come out strong and Berlin’ll slump again. Then, without batting an eyelid, you can put down another million marks on the table. Coffee without cash—nothing doing!”
    Thereupon the door closed; sentence had been pronounced. Wolfgang turned back. “She may be right, Peter!” he said reflectively. “By the time I’d persuaded her about the coffee it would have been twelve o’clock, and if the dollar is really going up—what do you think?”
    He did not, however, wait for a reply, but continued, somewhat embarrassed: “Make yourself comfortable in bed, and I’ll carry the things straight to Uncle’s. In twenty minutes—at most half an hour—I’ll be back again and we’ll breakfast comfortably on rolls and liver sausage—you in bed and I on the edge. What do you think, Peter?”
    “Oh, Wolf,” she said weakly, and her eyes became very big. “Today!”
    Although they had not said a word about it this morning, he did not pretend to misunderstand her. Rather conscience-stricken, he replied: “Yes, I know it’s silly. But it’s really not my fault. Or almost not. Everything went wrong last night. I already had pretty fair winnings when I had the mad idea that zero must win. I don’t understand myself at all.…”
    He stopped. He saw the gaming table before him, nothing more than a worn green cloth on the dining table of a good middle-class room; in one corner stood a great hulking buffet with carved pinnacles and knobs, knights and ladies and lions’ mouths. For the gambling hells of those days led a nomadic existence, always in flight from the department of the police which dealt with them. If they thought the police had smelled out the old meeting place, then the very next day they would rent a dining or drawing room from some impoverished clerk. “Only for a few hours tonight when you’re not using the room. And you can lie in bed and sleep; what we are doing is no business of yours.”
    So it happened that the prewar room which a head accountant or departmental chief’s mother-in-law had furnished became, after eleven o’clock at night, the meeting place of evening dresses and dinner jackets. In the quiet, decent streets, touts and drummers collected their clientele—provincial uncles, sizzled gentlemen undecided where to go next, stock-exchange jobbers who had not had enough of the daily exchange swindle. The house porter had his palm oiled and slept soundly; the outer door could be opened as often as they liked. In the sober passage with the tarnished brass clothes-hooks, a littletable stood with the big box of chips, guarded by a bearded, melancholy giant, looking like a sergeant major. A cardboard notice “HERE” on a door indicated the toilet. They spoke in whispers, everybody realizing that the people in the rest of the house must not notice anything amiss. There were no drinks. They had no use for “drunks” because of the noise they might make. There was only gambling—sufficient intoxication in itself.
    It was so quiet that even behind the entrance hall one could hear the humming of the ball. Behind the croupier stood two men in dinner jackets, ready at any moment to step in and settle an argument by the dreaded expulsion into the street, by exclusion from the game. The croupier wore a tail coat. But all three resembled each other, he and the two birds-of-a-feather standing behind, whether lean or fat, dark or fair. All had cold, alert eyes, crooked, beaky noses, and thin lips. They rarely talked with each other; they communicated by glances, at most by a nudge of the shoulder. They were evil, greedy, insensible—adventurers, cut-purses, convicts—God alone knew. It was impossible to visualize them leading a private life with wife and children. One could not imagine how they behaved when alone, getting out of bed, looking at themselves in the mirror while shaving. They seemed born to stand behind gaming tables—evil, greedy, insensible.