In the course of this monologue I had talked myself into a towering rage. Now I suddenly stood up and to Magda’s astonishment brusquely remarked that I had a bad headache and wanted to take a walk for a quarter of an hour—no thank you, no company. And with that I was outside already, and it was really all the same to me what she thought or whether I had hurt her feelings again. I turned six or seven corners till I came to a district where I thought I was not known, and went into a little saloon and asked the fat bearded landlord for a double cognac. As I was knocking back the third one, for I wanted to make proper provision for the night, the landlord said slowly, “This is a bit unusual for you, Herr Sommer, I suppose you’ve got a cold, have you?” Angry to find myself so well known, I gave up the idea of a fourth drink and started for home. I sucked my sweet breath cachous and of course I was furious with Magda because she obliged me to drive away the delicious taste of the cognac with such sickly scented sweets.
She was still waiting for me, probably she wanted to inveigle me into further discussion about her boring honey, but I went straight to the bedroom, and only muttered a few sullen words, pretending that I still had a bad headache. Then I quickly fell asleep.
But in the middle of the night, shortly after one o’clock, I stood barefoot in the larder again, in my pyjamas, and emptied in quick succession what was left in the three bottles, and while I had the last bottle at my lips, I realised with a terrible certainty that I was lost, that there was no salvation for me, that I belonged to alcohol, body and soul. Now it was quite immaterial whether I kept up some appearance of seemliness and moral responsibility for a few days or weeks—it was all over, in any case. Let Magda come and catch me drinking. I’d tell her to her face that I’d become a drunkard, and that she had driven me to it, she and her infernal efficiency!
But she didn’t come. So I left the three bottles standing there empty, and put the corks beside them. Let them all know, Magda, Else, everybody, it was all the same to me!
But then, towards morning, I felt so heavy-hearted that I got up again, virtually licked the last few drops out of the necks of the bottles, filled them with water, half- or three-quarters full as the case might be, corked them and put them back in their old place. And so I gained two or three days’ grace.…
10
Following this, I went to the office fairly regularly and did a certain amount of work, not for the pleasure of it, but because it was an old habit not easily broken, and because I felt ashamed of myself in front of Magda. Magda had grown very quiet; we only discussed the most essential things now. The only time we showed any animation was when some third person was present—Hinzpeter or Else or a client. Then we could even joke together, and the good-humoured tone of our early married life seemed to have returned, but hardly had the door shut behind this third person, than we fell silent immediately, my face froze and Magda began to rummage among some papers. During this time she constantly kept near me. Not that she would walk with me to the office, but five or ten minutes later she would appear without fail. The running of the house was left entirely in Else’s hands. Naturally this supervision had not the slightest effect on me, I did as I liked, that is to say, I drank when I wanted to. From my customary small nips I had passed on to taking long pulls out of the bottle. I always kept a bottle in my desk at the office and another in the corner of the bathroom cupboard at home. I enjoyed smuggling these bottles in under Magda’s eyes, as it were, in my brief-case or even in my trousers pocket covered by my jacket. Whenever I replenished my store, I experienced a real feeling of happiness, as if I had grown richer. At the very slightest sign of thirst I could take a drink. At home in the bathroom it was simple enough, but in the office, which Magda shared with me, there were difficulties sometimes. I would sit for several minutes, turning over in my mind some pretext to send her outside. Once, when I couldn’t think of anything, right in her presence I went as far as to set the uncorked bottle on the floor—the desk hid me from sight—and then I dropped my india-rubber and started fussily to look for it, ending up on all fours under the arch of my desk, where, delighted at my own cleverness, I sent a considerable amount of cognac gurgling down my throat.
I changed my mind almost hourly about the extent to which Magda could see through me. As a rule, I was firmly convinced that she guessed nothing, but at other times, when I was bad-tempered and irritable, I was almost certain that she was completely aware of what I was up to. Sometimes I would moodily pace up and down the office, constantly passing Magda’s place; then I was evil, as I called it, not for any special reason, not even on account of Magda, but I was just evil, as downright bad and wicked as a man can be, that’s how evil I was, and I was looking for a pretext to start quarrelling with her. In this quarrel I wanted to find out for certain whether she knew all or nothing, and if she knew all, then I wanted to drop the last pretence of decorum. Right in the presence of my neat, sober, efficient wife, I wanted to get blind raving drunk, to put my feet up on the desk, to sing coarse and dirty songs and use obscene expressions. What utter satisfaction to drag her down into the filth with me, to make her see: this is the one you used to love, and this is what your love has made of him.…
I paced up and down even more rapidly, I no longer felt ashamed, I threw her fierce challenging glances, and then, just before I broke out, she always got up and left the office. But I stared after her, I stared furiously at the brown grained door, I clenched my fists, I ground my teeth. “Run away again, you coward. But that’s what you’ve made of me, you and your efficiency!” Finally I sat down at my desk again, had a good drink, and grew tired and gentle.
If I said that I only went on working from force of habit, that is not quite correct—one should not hide one’s light under a bushel. Through the alcohol, I lost much of my dignified reserve, I could gossip far more freely with my country clients, we slapped each other on the back, told jokes—always looking round to make sure Magda was nowhere about—and thus I managed to bring off a number of unusually advantageous deals. I now liked to do something that I had never done before, something for which I had considered myself too dignified and my firm too respectable; I would go with my country customers into some little saloon, and there, over a scarred lime-wood table on which our glasses left wet rings, we talked a great deal, drank still more, and often I managed to buy at most advantageous prices from my half-drunken clients. When I got back to the office again and notified Hinzpeter of these transactions so that he could enter them into the books, I noticed the looks which this dry little adding-machine exchanged with my wife, but I only laughed.
However, one morning, after a deal in which I had properly soaked the bailiff of a large farm and had talked him into selling me a whole truckload of peas at half the regular market price, well, that morning I heard the sound of excited conversation in the yard, and when I went to the window I saw the bailiff, sober now, talking wildly to my wife and Hinzpeter. I stared through the glass for quite a while, and thought to myself: “Yes, go on talking, be as sober as you like, but you can’t talk away that signature you put on the deal last night!”
Now Magda spoke and he nodded and shook his head and stamped his foot and suddenly he looked across to me and must have seen me behind the glass and, would you believe it, the fellow raised his arm and shook his fist at me, in front of my wife and Hinzpeter, and shouted a term of abuse, that sounded something like “Old swindler!” I waited and waited for Magda to turn the insolent fellow out of the yard, but she only spoke quietly to him and after a while the bailiff let his fist drop and they resumed their discussion. I was disgusted at my wife’s spinelessness, and after a while, as they still went on talking, I sat down at my desk, opened a certain compartment and fortified myself. After a further lapse of time, during which I had sat thinking of nothing, the door opened and Magda came in, looking very pale, a brief-case in her hand. She put the brief-case on the desk, and started to rummage about among the papers, otherwise it was perfectly quiet in our office, and the alcohol went gently around inside me and made me feel peaceful and contented. But suddenly Magda dropped the papers, let her head fall on to the desk and burst wildly into tears. I was perfectly helpless, had no idea what to do, and anyway in my present agreeable condition I was much too lethargic to do anything. I just said rather feebly: “What’s the matter? Do calm yourself, Magda. I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that!”