An Old Heart Goes A-Journeying (19 page)

“Tighter!” said his father. “So you won’t do everything I bid you?”

“N-no.”

“You won’t say who let you out of the woodshed, and where Marie is now?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t really mean me to.”

“So,” laughed the farmer grimly. “Does it look as if I didn’t? And why don’t I mean you to?”

“Because you don’t mean me to give away my friends.”

The father eyed his son thoughtfully. Then he walked slowly to the table, lowered himself on to the bench, propped his head on his hands, and said: “Go into the kitchen and ask your mother for a glass of schnapps. A tumblerful.”

The boy went into the kitchen leaving the door ajar, and his father listened. The farmer’s wife whispered some hurried questions which the son barely answered. His father nodded.

The son closed the door behind him and set the glass before his father. The farmer took a deep draught, and held the glass out to the boy: “Have a drop.”

The boy shook his head, “No, thank you.”

“Why not? Schnapps is good stuff.”

“No, I won’t drink any schnapps.”

“None at all?”

“None at all.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to sit driveling in a public house.”

“Does your father sit driveling in a public house?” asked the farmer sharply.

“No. But the others do.”

“And you think you might later on, eh? Who put that into your head? Was it Marie?”

“No. That’s just how I feel.”

Wilhelm Gau eyed his son once more. “So,” he said, partly to himself. “He’s got a will of his own. I didn’t start till later.”

Then he added: “Otsche, Schlieker won’t forget this day in a hurry.”

“No, he won’t.”

“You won’t do anything that would get us in wrong with the Schliekers?”

“No, Father.”

“Promise?”

“Yes, Father.”

The father gripped his son’s hand hard, but this time he did not flinch.

“And keep your eyes peeled, Otsche. I can’t be everywhere. Something might happen to the cattle, a rick might catch fire, or the farm buildings.”

“I will,” said Otsche.

“And remember—you’re on your own in all this: don’t bring your sisters into it,” said the farmer. “Who opened that woodshed—Christa, or Evi, or your mother?”

The boy grinned and was silent.

“Get along, you young rascal!”

And the boy tripped out of the room.

On the farther side of the road, opposite the Gau farm buildings, among clumps of lilacs and elder bushes, stood an old abandoned bakehouse; here the children were hidden and had witnessed Schlieker’s downfall.

It looked awful, and it was awful, but not one of those children stirred a step to help the victim. They whispered excitedly together while the man lay moaning on the ground.

“What are we to do now? What ought we to do? We can’t leave him lying there—suppose he dies!”

“No, it’s the Gaus’ business to look after him.”

Then a farm hand came down the street and stopped at the sight of the prostrate figure.

“That’s our horse boy, Will,” said Hübner. “He’ll help him up.”

But the two men appeared to be quarreling. The children heard Schlieker snarl: “Go to hell, you fool! Can’t I lie down in the road if I choose?”

“Lie where you damn well like,” said the man with equal surliness and passed on.

“He doesn’t want any help, he’ll spit at anyone who comes near him,” whispered Strohmeier.

The farm hand had vanished in the darkness and the prostrate figure sat up with a groan. Then he crawled to the nearest tree, pulled himself up by the trunk, and stood erect.

Schlieker stood motionless for a while in unbroken silence while the children looked on with throbbing hearts. Then the shadow moved away from the tree and hobbled along to the Gaus’ house.

“He’s going back!”

“The fool! He’s left his bicycle.”

The man stood, a dumb shadow figure, outside the front door. He seemed to be losing his balance, and clutching at the air, actually he was shaking his clenched fists at the door. And they could hear his muttered imprecations. “Damn them—damn them to hell!”

Then Schlieker took his bicycle, and half leaning on it and half pushing it, he staggered through the village, cursing as he went.

“And what are
we
to do?” said the children.

“You go and get some supper first,” said Rosemarie decisively. “Then all who can please come back to the sand pit. But first ask Otsche how he got on with his father.”

“Yes,” they agreed, “and what about you and Philip?”

“We’ll trail Paul Schlieker. We’ll need to watch him now. He might do anything.”

“He won’t do anything tonight. He’ll go to bed.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Rosemarie reflectively. “Anyway, we’re going to follow him.”

For she feared him when she could not see him, and she feared him also when she could.

Which contains an account of the youth, the rise, and the vicissitudes of the Schliekers

I
T WAS NOW
almost completely dark, and the village street was empty. And if anyone hurrying from house to stable caught sight of a shadowy figure staggering homewards with a bicycle, it would merely have looked like someone from the lower village who had stayed too long at the inn.

“He’s got a pretty good load on board,” would have been the natural remark.

Yes, the staggering figure had indeed got a load on board; but what burdened him was not drink or aching bones; it was rage—blind, devouring rage. At first it was directed against the people he had left, but the Gaus would not run away, he could deal with them in his own good time. The road dipped, and the man’s thoughts now went before him: he was going home—to the woman who had brought about his downfall, and his wrath veered. The Gaus could wait, indeed he could
not settle his score with them yet; but that idiot wife of his. . . .

He stopped, shifted the bicycle from his right hand to his left, and tried his free right arm—yes, he could swing it. And he would swing it to some purpose. On and on he trudged, along the thorny way of wrath and cruelty and hatred. Such, alas, was the song that had been sung at Paul Schlieker’s cradle, on the very day when he was born; though it was not in fact a cradle, but the foot of a straw mattress in a servant’s bedroom at Biestow. The bastard baby of one Erna Schlieker, spinster, who never changed her name. Father unknown.

Unknown?—As he tottered home he could well remember the man who strode across the farmyard at Biestow and launched a genial kick at the little crawling creature: “Get out of my way, you little bastard.”

Robert Tode was a sly old fox; he did not acknowledge bastards, and when he handed the farm over to his son-in-law, his only daughter’s husband, he was careful only to lease it to his heirs. Robert Tode meant to die the master of his farm, flattered by all and sundry, much respected, and a member of the Parish Council.

His bastard son, without rights or heritage, had all his father’s foxy qualities, but none of those that would ever make him master of anything at all. As a child he had learnt that it was useless to cry when he was kicked; his mother merely came out and slapped him when he did. He had learnt to listen for the tread of danger and to hide. He, the bastard, grew up on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, the bleaker and more
perilous side, but he had watched his fellow beings from his lair.

He was not a shrinking creature like his mother Erna, who endured in silence, let herself be used for a year or two, only to be flung away to die in a ditch. He had something of his father’s obstinate energy. He would hide—he would bide his time, but he would snarl and bully and lie and cheat. What does a bastard know of shame? Not a boy in the village school would share a bench with him.

And as he could only make his way by guile and impudence, he despised everybody and everything, himself included. He could even borrow Lau’s flute, and tootle his way, triumphant in his shame, through the village as it sat at dinner.

But that time was not yet; before he became the butt of village jokers, he had a long way to travel. He had to wriggle and twist and outwit his fellow citizens of Biestow. They refused to let him learn a trade, but when he was fourteen they packed him out of the poorhouse and put him to work for a farmer. “Now,” they said, “see what you can do. You have been a burden on us long enough.”

And he had not done so badly, for he was capable as well as cunning. Moreover, he knew nothing of property, which safeguards and secures a man; he stood for himself alone. He soon learned to manage horses and cows, and he picked up all the work of a farm. He doctored the cattle when they were sick, and though the villagers feared the lank foxy lad, they asked his advice. He could plane a beam or thatch a roof, split stones and lay bricks. And when no builder was to be had, he could
put up a wall using a water level and a plummet, all as neat as could be—and plaster it as well.

Competent, industrious and handy, he worked his fingers to the bone for every penny—and when Frau von Wanzka offered him a post as gardener, he promptly accepted. A permanent job as gardener on the Tischendorf estate meant another step up for the bastard from the maid’s bed in Biestow.

Did success bring oblivion, or soften his temper? No, his fellow servants took care of that. When he tried to kiss the pretty pantry maid, she reminded him who he was and who she was. And when he saw boys stealing apples and ran after them, they yelled: “Biestow bastard! Workhouse boy!”

His schoolmates at Biestow had accomplished little; the farmers’ sons became farmers or farm hands, the cottagers’ sons became day laborers or less, while he was gardener on an estate. He had saved nearly a thousand marks. But the stain of his birth clung to him as gardener at Tischendorf as it had when he was the maid’s son at Biestow.

He set his teeth, labored and persevered; soon he had saved four thousand marks.

And then he fell in with the fifth of the six daughters of the rich master baker Sass, at Kriwitz. True, she was far from a beauty with her peaked, birdlike face, but the Biestow bastard would hardly have been considered eligible, had she not been a damaged article.

People said the fat baker drank too much—though his other five daughters seemed healthy enough. God seemed to have viewed just one with disfavor and afflicted her
alone with the falling sickness or epilepsy, as old Doctor Faulmann called it.

From time to time she was very bad and would fall down and foam at the mouth several times a day. Her parents and sisters were sick of her. They longed to get her out of the house.

As a crowning insult they regarded Paul Schlieker as the obvious match for the poor wretch.

But Schlieker’s invariable luck did not desert him; from the day Amalie Sass married, she was cured. He had a healthy wife, with a complete trousseau, and three thousand marks as dowry—could a wastrel from the Biestow poorhouse ask for more?

More? A great deal!

He got the right companion, cut to his measure, poison blended with poison and hate joined to hate. No pair could have been better suited.

Yes, the years had left their mark on Amalie Sass, now Mali Schlieker. Shut in a back room as the disgrace of the family, she was never allowed to show herself. Meanwhile, her sisters went about the house laughing and singing and having their love affairs, though they made faces and fell silent when they caught sight of Sister Mali. She never forgot.

Mali had toiled and schemed like Paul, she had not known the triumphs of successful guile, she had always had to live her life in a bleak back room—until he came and set her free!

The man was a rascal and a blackguard, ruthless and cunning which was all to the good because their enemies deserved no mercy! They walked hand in hand, comrades
through thick and thin—one voice, one hatred, and two minds that thought as one.

Then, one day, they bethought them of Frau von Wanzka’s ward, Pastor Thürke’s daughter who had been pestering Frau von Wanzka for a long while. Her guardians had put her in charge of Farmer Gau, but she beset the good lady two or three times a week with complaints of ill-treatment, overwork and starvation.