It was like that and not otherwise!

But from him, precisely from him, the boy would have no need to run. Certainly not. He smiled bitterly. He would have done nothing to him. Again he felt that momentary slight pain, whose origin he did not know or even where it was.

He walked on. He did not know where he was or how late it was.

He found himself back at Potsdamer Platz and his hotel, dined poorly somewhere in the neighborhood, and went to bed early.

But again and again he saw the small, pale face before him and how it had looked up at him. And though he told himself, “What is this strange boy to you, whom you will never see again!” he was able to drive it away.

He saw it as he undressed. He even took it into his dreams on his first night in this strange metropolis.

Why had he run away from him?

3

When the boy who had arrived in Berlin the day before was awakened toward noon by a rough knocking and a raw voice that roared through the door, suggesting that he finally get up, he stared around at first at his strange surroundings, drunk with sleep. Then his first move was to reach under his pillow, where he had put his money yesterday evening before going to sleep. It was still there.

He washed himself scantily and dressed.

Somewhat later, he was standing on the street with no idea of what region he was in.

But his first feeling was one of intense hunger. Since his train trip yesterday he had eaten only a couple of rolls. After wandering some streets, he ventured into a still empty bar.

There he thought it over.

The main thing now was to find Max.

He again pulled out a dirty, crumpled calling card and read for the hundredth time what he knew by heart: Skalitzer Strasse 37, c/o Hampel.

“Where is Skalitzer Strasse?” he inquired of the proprietor when leaving. Near the Silesia Train Station, he was told. He should take a 48 and then ask a green.

He knew neither what the number 48 meant, nor what a “green” was.

It would probably be best to inquire along the way.

This he did, at first hesitantly and timidly, then with increasing courage. He was directed correctly and falsely—or simply left standing—and after a walk of almost two hours he finally arrived, not in the vicinity of the train station—from where, he was told, it “should not be far away”—but in a large square with a brown church and a water basin formed by a canal. Finally, also on the square, he found Skalitzer Strasse.

He stood for a long while in front of the house with number 37. Maybe Max would come out presently. That would be fine. But Max did not appear, so he finally decided to go through the courtyard to the back of the house. An old woman directed him to Max’s flat—upstairs, to the right. Up there was indeed the name Hampel on a metal plate. He had hardly shyly rung the bell, when the door was thrown open and a shabby, untidy woman holding an infant at her half-naked breast appeared.

“Who do you want? Max Friedrichsen?”—and a flood of verbal abuse poured over the disconcerted boy, from which he gathered only that Max had lived there, that he had skipped out without paying, and finally that he had “hauled those guys up here,” and that if he, yes he, didn’t get out right away, then she would have the police called to arrest him, for he too was certainly one of the “queer boys” and looked just like one.

Then the crying of other children sounded in the background, the door was slammed, and the boy was glad to be able to steal down the stairs again. That was really a frightful woman. Compared with her, the farmer women who shopped in the store in his village, raising beastly outcries when they thought they were being cheated of a penny, were the purest angels!

He was actually trembling. Then with the thought that he did not know where to look to find Max, he became entirely discouraged. He was on the verge of tears. What was he to do here—without him!

The best thing was to go right back home and take whatever he got. To do that, he had to go back to the train station where he had arrived yesterday. With tired feet he set out to retrace his path. He now had some experience in asking his way and he now also looked at the people first.