“I promise you, Herr Schulze”, I said eagerly, and almost cheerfully now, “I promise on my honour.”
“Fine,” he replied, “I’ll trust you. Put your coat on. There’s your hat. Have you got anything else? Then come along!”
He went with me out of the cell, we descended a stairway and stood in the village street. I had only been in the semi-darkness of the lock-up for a few hours, but the spacious brightness of the countryside overwhelmed me. My heart beat faster at this greeting from the outside world. “Supposing,” I quickly thought, “supposing I were to jump over the fence and run through that bushy garden, across the meadows and into the forest, would Schulze trouble to catch me again? Would he even shoot after me as if I were a real criminal? Oh no,” I thought, with a weak smile, “he’d never do that. We’ve often played cards together, and he knows who I am and what I represent. But I don’t want to run away from him at all,” I quickly thought, “I promised I wouldn’t cause any trouble, and I’m a man of my word. But there’s something else I want from him.…”
When Schulze had mentioned that he had to take me to the police-court, a hopeful possibility had occurred to me.
“Herr Schulze,” I said very politely, “I would like you to do me a favour.…”
“Well, what is it, Sommer?” he asked. “Am I walking too fast? We can easily go slower. The train doesn’t leave for another twenty minutes.”
“Look, Herr Schulze,” I began, “I’ve got a frightful toothache. And I see there’s an inn just over the road. Couldn’t I quickly nip in and have a rum or a brandy? That always relieves my toothache immediately. You can stand at the bar with me,” I quickly continued, “if you’re afraid I’ll run away from you. Of course, I won’t run away. It’s just on account of this terrible toothache.”
“You put that right out of your head,” said the sergeant firmly. “I’d lose my uniform if it got around that I’d been drinking schnaps with a prisoner in some pub. Nothing doing, Sommer.”
“But nobody knows me here, Herr Schulze,” I cried pleadingly. “It’ll never come out.”
“There!” cried the sergeant, and he raised his hand to his helmet in salute. The doctor’s car, with the Public Prosecutor sitting next to Dr Mansfeld, had passed us.
“If those two had seen us going into a pub, I’d have been for it! So let’s get on. Sommer!”
“Herr Schulze,” I pleaded, and I did not stir a step from the square in front of the inn, my last chance. “There’s really not a soul here who knows me. Please do me this one favour! Just one single schnaps! I’ll tell my wife to let you have a hundred marks …”
“That’s going too far!” shouted the sergeant, red with rage. “Have you gone raving mad, Sommer? That’s bribery, what you’re trying to do. I ought to charge you on the spot. Come on immediately, or I’ll put you in handcuffs.”
Utterly crushed and intimidated, robbed of my last hope, I followed Herr Schulze. For a while we walked silently side by side, he muttering angrily to himself, I with bowed head and dragging feet.
Then the sergeant said more calmly, “I can’t understand you, Sommer. You used to be a solid and respectable man, and now you get up to tricks like this. Haven’t you had enough of that old drink? Hasn’t it got you into enough trouble? Anyway, I don’t want to put you into a worse plight than you are already. I didn’t hear a thing. But be a good fellow now, Sommer, and pull yourself together. In a few days that boozing fit will be over and you’ll have a clear head again. And you’re going to need a mighty clear head, as you ought to know by what the Public Prosecutor said.”
I heard all this in silence, without answering. I found it most humiliating and offensive that such a simple fellow as Sergeant Schulze should dare to presume to speak to me in such a way. Of course I did not know then that I stood at the beginning of a long road of suffering, and that quite other people, of much lower standing, were to be far more outspoken with me.
We had arrived at the station, and Sergeant Schulze bought two third-class tickets for us.
“Well,” he said, and marched me on to the platform among the waiting people. “Keep your head up, Sommer, and go on talking to me, then nobody will notice anything. They’ll all think we’re old acquaintances who’ve just met by chance. At home, after a game of cards, we used to walk along the Breitestrasse together for a bit, and it never occurred to you or anyone else that we were anything other than acquaintances.…”
He was right there. And since by now I had somewhat recovered from my shock over the schnaps, we really managed to hold quite a sensible conversation, first about the hay harvest which was just starting, then about the harvest prospects in general. Schulze and I were both of the opinion that on the whole the outlook was not bad, but it ought to rain now, the spring had been too dry, and the forage especially, but the mangolds as well could do with a bit of moisture.
The short train journey passed quite quickly, and probably none of the passengers had an inkling that here was a man under arrest for attempted murder. (Sometimes I liked to imagine myself as some real and gloriously villainous criminal.) But when we reached our own station and forced our way through the waiting crowds, into the booking-hall then out into the square in front of the station, I felt quite apprehensive again. For at any moment I might meet a close acquaintance, or one of my own employees even, yes, even my own wife. I tugged at the sergeant’s sleeve, and begged, “Herr Schulze, couldn’t we go round by the back streets a bit, and through the park? I know so many people here, and it would really be most embarrassing.…”
Herr Schulze nodded his head.
“That’s all right as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t matter whether you get to the police-court a quarter of an hour earlier or later. But I’d like to relieve myself.…” And with that, Herr Schulze accompanied me diagonally across the square to that very edifice I had visited with Lobedanz, coming from another direction some twenty-four hours before. It was a strange feeling, to be standing again in this room with its six basins, to hear the water rushing and to look at the dirty wet asphalt floor. This was where I had wrestled with Lobedanz—it was such a short time ago and yet already it seemed quite incredible. Like a wild dream that is completely convincing while one dreams it, and yet seems absurdly grotesque as soon as one awakes. But I had fought Lobedanz here, it hadn’t been a dream, and no word of honour nor feeling of consideration bound me to that arch-rogue. So when we came out of the public convenience again and were making our way along the edge of town, avoiding all the busier streets, I took heart and told Sergeant Schulze one after the other, all my experiences with Lobedanz, from the time I first appeared in his steam-filled kitchen after my flight from the doctor’s car, to my fight for my suitcase and money in the toilet. In the course of his duty, Sergeant Schulze must have experienced too much of human passions and weaknesses to be very surprised about an affair like this, but during my story he stopped several times, quite moved, and exclaimed, “Good heavens, it’s unbelievable!” “You don’t say! Is that really true, Sommer?” He whistled through his teeth as well. Finally, when I had finished and was waiting for an outburst of indignation against that scoundrel Lobedanz, Sergeant Schulze remained silent for a while and then, looking me full in the face, he said deliberately: “I only know you from playing cards with you. That’s to say, I don’t really know you at all, but I always took you for a sensible clear-headed businessman. That you’re such a—excuse the expression but it’s the truth—such a stupid ox, is something I would never have dreamed of. You can twist and turn it about as you please, but it wasn’t just the booze. You can’t blame such thick-headedness as that on the booze. You must have seen what a scoundrel the fellow was, the very first day. Well, you did see it, and yet you didn’t get out, though you would have been able to soak as you wanted in any little pub around the corner. No, it absolutely served you right that that fellow took you down. It served you right, and I only wish he’d taken that last thousand marks from you as well, then you wouldn’t have been able to get up to mischief in that inn.…”