But what will happen when they drive my oxen away?’

‘They won’t drive your oxen away, Päplow.’

‘How will you stop them? By violence?’

‘No violence. No violence against this State and its administration. I have another idea.’

‘If you have another idea . . . But it has to work. I need the money for the oxen.’

‘It will work. Tomorrow farmers all over the country will know how we in Gramzow deal with the tax office. Go, and don’t worry.’

Farmer Päplow goes out through the back door, crosses the yard, and disappears round the corner. Seven farmers funnel out into the crowded bar.

III

There is some commotion outside the pub: the two tax officials are coming. Each of them has a red ox on a halter.

They have been to Päplow’s farm. Some farmhand was there, and let them into the cow-byre, to the attached animals. The farmer and his wife were nowhere to be found, there was no one to whom to present the order to pay. So they led away the two beasts, and brought them to the Krug, to hold the auction as duly announced.

They tether the animals to the post outside the door, and walk into the pub. In the bar there was some murmuring of conversation, perhaps the odd oath, when they saw the men with the two beasts. Now there is silence. But thirty or forty farmers are staring fixedly and expressionlessly at the two officials.

‘Is there a Herr Päplow from Gramzow here?’ Kalübbe asks into the silence.

No reply.

Kalübbe walks down the middle of the room to the bar. Under so many hostile eyes his walk is clumsy and awkward. He knocks against a stick that is hanging over the back of a chair. It falls to the ground with a clatter. Kalübbe bends down to pick it up, hooks it over the chairback again, and mumbles, ‘Excuse me.’

The farmer merely looks at him, and then stares out the window.

Kalübbe says to mine host: ‘I am here as you know to hold an auction. Would you set up a table for me here?’

The host growls: ‘There’s no table here, nor no room for one neither.’

‘You know you have to make space for me.’

‘How would you want me to do that, sir? Who do I send away? Perhaps you could make some room for yourself? Sir?’

Kalübbe says emphatically: ‘You know you are required—’

And the weaselly publican, quickly: ‘I know. I know. But give me some advice. Not the law, but some advice I can follow.’

A commanding voice calls through the pub: ‘Put up a table outside.’

Suddenly the little landlord is all action and politeness. ‘A table outside the door. Of course. What a good idea. From there the animals will be in plain view too.’

The table is brought out. The host in person carries two chairs.

‘And now a couple of glasses of beer for ourselves, Landlord.’

The landlord stops, his face creases with worry.