He had seen little of his father, who sat for the most part in his study reading the letters of condolence or registering them in a book. The pastor, who now arrived every day, often staying for dinner, was the only one who spoke of the dead, but as he brought out only a sort of professional platitudes they were but little regarded, and his only listener seemed to be Herr von Pasenow, for he now and then nodded his head and seemed on the point of saying something that lay very urgently on his mind; but he always finished merely by repeating the pastor’s last few words with a nod to emphasize them, as for instance: “Ay, ay, Herr Pastor, sorely tried parents.”

Then Joachim had to leave for Berlin. When he went to say good-bye to his father the old man began again to march up and down. Joachim remembered countless similar good-byes in this room which he disliked so much, well as he knew it, with the hunt trophies on the walls, the spittoon in the corner beside the stove, the writing equipment on the desk, which probably had stood as it was now since his grandfather’s time, the pile of sport journals on the table, most of them uncut. He waited for his father to stick his monocle in his eye as usual and dismiss him with a curt: “Well, a pleasant journey, Joachim.” But this time his father said nothing, but only continued to walk up and down, his hands behind his back, so that Joachim got up a second time. “Really, father, I must be going now, or I’ll miss my train.” “Well, a pleasant journey, Joachim,” the accustomed reply came at last, “but there’s something I want to say to you. I’m afraid you’ll have to come here for good soon. The place has become empty, yes, empty …” he looked round him … “but some people don’t see that … of course one must maintain one’s honour …” he had begun his walk again, then, confidentially: “And what about Elisabeth? We spoke about it before.…” “Father, it’s high time I was away,” said Joachim, “else I’ll lose my train.” The old man held out his hand, and Joachim took it unwillingly.

As he drove through the village he saw from the church clock that he was still in ample time for the train; indeed he had known that before. The church door chancing to be open, he ordered the coachman to stop. He had an offence to wipe off, an offence against the church which had been merely a pleasantly cool place to him, against the pastor to whose well-meaning words he had not listened, against Helmuth whose burial he had dishonoured with profane thoughts; in a word, an offence against God. He entered and tried to recapture the feelings which as a child had been his when every Sunday he had stood here as before the face of God. At that time he had known a great number of hymns, and had sung them with ardour. But it would hardly do for him to begin singing now quite by himself, in the church. He must confine himself to assembling his thoughts and concentrating them on God and his own sinfulness, his littleness and wretchedness before God. But his thoughts refused to seek God. The only thing that came into his mind was a sentence from Isaiah which he had once heard in this place: “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.” Yes, Bertrand was right, they had lost their faith; and now he tried to say the Lord’s Prayer with closed eyes, being careful not to utter a single word emptily, but to grasp the meaning of each; and when he came to the words, “as we forgive our debtors,” the tender, apprehensive and yet trustful feelings of his childhood rose in him again; he remembered that he had always applied this passage to his father and from it had drawn the confidence that he would be able to forgive his father, yes, to feel all the love towards him which it was the duty of a child to feel; and now he remembered again that the old man had spoken of his loneliness, of which he was visibly afraid, and which one must make lighter for him. As Joachim left the church the words “uplifted and strengthened” came into his mind, and they did not seem empty to him, but full of new and encouraging meaning. He resolved to visit Elisabeth.

In the carriage the phrase arose in his mind again, again he thought “uplifted and strengthened,” but now it was associated with the image of a starched1 shirt-front and the joyful expectation of seeing Ruzena again.

1 In German the same word serves for “strengthened” and “starched.”

II

A pedestrian was coming from the direction of Königstrasse. He was corpulent and square-built, indeed actually squat, and everything about him was so extraordinarily soft that one might have fancied that he was poured into his clothes every morning. He was a serious pedestrian, he wore a grey-lustre coat over his trousers of black cloth, and his chest was covered with a brown beard. He was obviously in a hurry, yet his walk was not rapid and undeviating, but a sort of purposive waddle such as suited a soft-bodied purposive man who was in a hurry. But it was not only the beard that concealed his face; he wore eyeglasses as well, through which he shot severe glances at the passers-by; and it was literally impossible to picture to oneself that a man like this, waddling with such haste in pursuit of some urgent business and shooting out such sharp and severe glances in spite of his soft appearance, was probably a kind and affectionate fellow in some other sphere of his existence, and that there must be women to whom he unbent in love, women and children to whom the beard uncovered a kindly smile, women who might dare to seek in a kiss the rosy lips in their dark-bearded cave.

When Joachim caught sight of this man he had mechanically followed him. It did not matter to him in any case where he went. Since he had learned that Bertrand had a Berlin agent for his firm, and that the office was in one of the streets between the Alexanderplatz and the Stock Exchange, he had sometimes felt drawn to this neighbourhood as formerly he had felt drawn to the working-class suburb—and the fact that he no longer had any need to look for Ruzena out there was almost like a promotion for her. But he did not come here, all the same, on the chance of meeting Bertrand: on the contrary he avoided the place whenever he knew Bertrand was in Berlin, nor indeed had he any interest in Bertrand’s agent. It was simply so strange to him that these should be the surroundings in which one had to picture Bertrand’s real life; and when he walked through those streets it sometimes happened that he not only scrutinized the fronts of the houses, as if to discover what offices were concealed behind them, but even peeped under the hats of the civilians as if they were women. Sometimes he wondered at this himself, for he was unaware that he searched these faces to discover whether their existence was so totally different from his own, and whether they could give him a clue to any qualities that Bertrand might have adopted from them, but still kept concealed. Yes, the secrecy of this life of theirs was so complete that they did not even need beards to hide themselves behind. Indeed they would have looked a little more confidential and less hypocritical to him if they had worn beards, and this may have been one of the reasons why he sauntered in the wake of the fat, hurrying man. Suddenly it seemed to him that the man in front of him fitted very strangely the picture he had always had of Bertrand’s agent.