It buzzed in her head: What had he done with the two thousand marks which he had embezzled from the builder? She distrusted his assertion that he had spent it all on the cashier of the Metropolitan Moving Picture Theatre. To make up a part of the money and prevent his arrest, she had had to pawn all her linen, two chests of drawers, the furnishings of her waiting-room, and also to mortgage a life insurance policy. Her letter to Privy Councillor Wahnschaffe had not even been answered.
She didn’t believe that he had wasted so much good money on that slut. He must have a few hundreds lying about somewhere. The thought gave her no rest. It was dangerous to let him notice her suspicion; but she could risk entering the room while he slept, burrowing in his clothes, and slipping her hand under his pillow.
But she stood perfectly still. In his presence she was always prepared for the unexpected. If he but opened his mouth, she trembled within. If people came to speak of him, she grew cold all over. If she stopped to think, she knew that it had always been so.
When the village schoolmaster had caught the ten-year-old boy in disgusting practices with a girl of eight, he had said: “He’ll end on the gallows.” When he was an apprentice, he had quarrelled over wages with his employer and threatened to strike him. The man had said: “He’ll end on the gallows.” When he had stolen a silver chain from the desk of the minister’s wife at Friesoythe, and his mother had gone to return it, the lady had said: “He’ll end on the gallows.”
The memories came thick and fast. He had beaten his first mistress, fat Lola who lived in Köpnicker Street, with barbarous cruelty, because at a dance in Halensee she had winked at a postal clerk. When the girl had writhed whining on the floor, and shrieked out in her pain: “There ain’t such another devil in the world!” the widow Engelschall had appealed to the enraged fellow’s conscience, and had said to him: “Go easy, my boy, go easy;” but her advice had been futile. When his second mistress was pregnant, he forced her to go for treatment to an evil woman with whom he was also intimate, and the girl died of the operation. He jeered at the swinish dullness of women who couldn’t do the least things right—couldn’t bear and couldn’t kill a brat properly. No one, fortunately, had heard this remark but the widow Engelschall. Again she had besought him: “Boy, go it a bit easier, do!”
At bottom she admired his qualities. You couldn’t fool with him. He knew how to take care of himself; he could get around anybody. If only he hadn’t always vented his childish rage on harmless things. The expense of it! If the fire didn’t burn properly, he’d tear the oven door from its hinges; if his watch was fast or slow, he’d sling it on the floor so that it was smashed; if meat was not done to his liking, he broke plates with his knife; if a cravat balked in the tying, he’d tear it to shreds, and often his shirt too. Then he laughed his goat-like laugh, and one had to pretend to share his amusement. If he noticed that one was annoyed, he became rabid, spared nothing, and destroyed whatever he could reach.
She wondered what he lived on in ordinary times, when he had had no special piece of good luck. For he seemed always in the midst of plenty, with pockets full of money, and no hesitation to spend and treat. Sometimes he worked—four days a week or five. And he could always get work. He knew his trade, and accomplished in one day more than other workmen did in three. But usually he extended blue Monday until Saturday, and passed his time in unspeakable dives with rogues and loose women.
The widow Engelschall knew a good deal about him. But there was a great deal that she did not know. His ways were mysterious. To ask him and to receive an answer was to be none the wiser. He was always planning something, brewing something. All this commanded the widow Engelschall’s profound respect. He was flesh of her flesh and spirit of her spirit. Yet her anxiety was great; and recently the cards had foretold evil with great pertinacity.