Nothing could so have pierced the soul of Christian as this wild stammering and this wild begging. He stood by the window, gazing into the night, and said slowly and reflectively: “Very well, you shall have them.”
Karen did not answer. She stretched herself out and closed her eyes. She didn’t take his words seriously. When he left her, there was a silent mockery in her mind—of him, of herself.
But the next morning Christian took the underground railway to the Anhalter Station, and bought a third-class ticket to Frankfort. In his hand he carried a small travelling bag.
XXXI
“Come on then, let’s see what you know!” Niels Heinrich said to his mother, the fortune-teller Engelschall.
They were in her inner sanctum. Attached to the ceiling by a black cord hung a stuffed bat with outstretched wings. Dark, glowing glass-beads had been set in its head. On the table, which was covered with cards, lay a death’s head.
It was Sunday night, and Niels Heinrich came from his favourite pub. He only stopped here on his way to a suburban dancing-hall. He wore a black suit and a blue and white linen waistcoat. He had pushed his derby hat so far to the back of his head that one saw the whole parting of his hair. In his left arm-pit he held a thin, little stick. He see-sawed on the chair on which he had slouched himself down.
“Come on now, trot out your tricks,” and he flung a five-mark piece on the table. In his dissipated eyes there was a shimmer as of some mineral and an indeterminate lustfulness.
The widow Engelschall was always afraid of him. She shuffled her cards. “You seem to be well fixed, my lad,” she fawned on him. “That’s right. Cut! And now let’s see what you let yourself in for.”