Wolf Among Wolves by Hans Fallada

Author:Hans Fallada [Fallada, Hans]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 978-1-935554-89-9
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2010-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

VII

Herr von Studmann had no ground for his fear that the old Geheimrat might turn up in person at the crayfish ponds. In fact, he judged Herr von Teschow wrongly. The latter did not mind prying around quietly, but he preferred to leave things to his men when it came to open rows. Ten horses could not have dragged him to the crayfish ponds where, on this afternoon, a row was to be expected. Instead he wandered, serene and affable, through the village of Neulohe, stopped whenever he met someone, exchanged a few words, and was indeed just like a prince mingling with his subjects. Old Elias hadn’t done it better three hours previously.

And while the Geheimrat chattered his way through the village, he was continually thinking what sort of business he could pretend to have at Haase’s, for he didn’t like doing things awkwardly. He had to find out what the magistrate had against Kniebusch; why he had submitted such an unfavorable report on him. If one doesn’t know everything one knows nothing, he had always said, and from Fräulein Kuckhoff he had often heard that no filth is so filthy as to prevent someone coming and growing the finest cucumbers on it.

But he couldn’t think of the slightest excuse and was becoming quite discouraged when, just in front of the village square, where the road descended to the cemetery, he saw old Leege. Old Leege was a very ancient woman; formerly, when she was still able to work, she had been employed on the farm, while her husband, now dead for a long time, had earned his bread partly in the parish as a gravedigger, partly in the forest as a woodman. That was all a long time ago, however, and old Leege had been dwelling for some ten years now, ever since her last grandchild went to America, in an old cottage by the cemetery wall. She was a little odd, and feared by everyone, for she had the reputation of being able to put a spell on cattle. This much was certain—warts and erysipelas disappeared at her incantations.

The old Geheimrat was not very fond of old women, a hunters’ superstition; and so he hurried on his way when he saw old Leege. But she had spied him with her sharp black eyes. She darted across the village square so as to block his path, and began, weeping huskily, to mumble something about her cottage roof, through which the whole of the last rain had come as through a sieve.

“That’s no business of mine, Leege,” the Geheimrat shouted into her deaf ears. “You must go to the magistrate about it. It’s a parish matter, not a farm matter.”

But old Leege would not be put off so easily, for she was firmly convinced that Herr von Teschow was her master and responsible for her welfare, just as he had been thirty or forty years ago—nor would she let herself be hustled out of the way. She filled the

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