He says, “All right, then!” and makes to go inside.

But Borkhausen grabs hold of his shirt and whispers to him, “Neighbor, let’s not lose any more words about what’s just happened. I’m not a spy and I don’t want to bring misfortune to anyone. But do me a favor, will you: I need to give my wife a bit of housekeeping money, and I haven’t got a penny. The children have had nothing to eat all day. Will you loan me ten marks—I’ll have them for you next Friday, I swear!”

As he did a moment earlier, Quangel shakes free of the man’s clutches. So that’s the kind of fellow you are, he thinks, that’s how you make your living! And: I won’t give him one mark, or he’ll think I’m afraid of him, and then I’ll never see the last of him. Aloud he says, “Listen, mate, I take home thirty marks a week, and we need every penny. I can’t lend you a thing.”

Then, without a further word or glance back, he passes through the factory gates. The security guard knows him and doesn’t stop him.

Borkhausen stands there staring and wondering what to do next. He feels like going to the Gestapo and denouncing Quangel, that would certainly net him a couple of packs of cigarettes at least. But better not. He had gotten ahead of himself this morning, he should have let Quangel speak; following the death of his son, there was every chance he would have done. But he got Quangel wrong. Quangel won’t allow himself to be played like a fish. Most people today are afraid, basically everyone, because they’re all up to something forbidden, one way or another, and are worried that someone will get wind of it. You just need to catch them at the right moment, and you’ve got them, and they’ll cough up. But Quangel, with his hawk’s profile, he’s different. He’s probably not afraid of anything, and it’s not possible to catch him out. No, Borkhausen will let him go, and perhaps try to get somewhere with the woman; the woman will have been thrown for a loop by the death of her only son! She’ll talk, all right.

So, he’ll keep the woman in reserve for the next few days, but what about now? It’s true that he needs to give Otti some money today, this morning he secretly wolfed the last of the bread in the box. But he has no money, and where is he going to get hold of some in a hurry? His wife is a real nag and can make his life a misery. Time was, she was a streetwalker on Schönhauser Allee, and she could be really sweet. Now she’s the mother of five children—most of them probably nothing to do with him—and she’s got a tongue on her like a fishwife. And she knocks him around too, him and the kids, in which case he hits her back. It’s her fault; she doesn’t have the sense to stop.

No, he can’t go back to Otti without some money. Suddenly he thinks of the old Rosenthal woman, who’s all alone now, without any one to protect her, on the fourth floor of 55 Jablonski Strasse. He wonders why he didn’t think of her before; there’s a more promising victim than that old buzzard, Quangel! She’s a cheerful woman—he remembers her from before, when she still used to have her haberdashery, and he’ll try the soft approach with her first. If that doesn’t work, he’ll bop her over the head. He’s sure to find something, an ornament or money or something to eat—something that will placate Otti.

While Borkhausen is thinking, envisioning what he might find—because of course the Jews still have all their property, they’re just hiding it from the Germans they stole it from in the first place—while he’s thinking, he nips back to Jablonski Strasse, pronto. In the stairwell, he pricks up his ears. He’s anxious not to be spotted by anyone here in the front building; he himself lives in the back building, in the “lower ground floor” of the “garden block”—the back basement, in other words.