Just now he was on his way to his younger son, Lieutenant Joachim von Pasenow.

Whenever Joachim von Pasenow met his father, memories of his boyhood thronged up in him as was natural enough: but the most vivid of these were always the events preceding his entrance to the cadet school in Culm. True, it was only fragments of the past that fleetingly emerged, and important and trivial things flowed chaotically through one another. So perhaps it may seem idle and superfluous to mention Jan, the steward, whose image, though he was a quite secondary figure, obtruded itself in front of all the others. But this may have been because Jan was not really a man, but a beard. For hours one could gaze at him and meditate whether, behind that dishevelled landscape covered with impenetrable yet soft undergrowth, a human creature was concealed. Even when Jan spoke—but he did not speak much—one could not be certain of this, for his words took form behind his beard as behind a curtain, and it might as easily have been another who uttered them. But most exciting of all was when Jan yawned; for then the hairy superficies gaped at a pre-ordained point, substantiating the fact that this was also the place where Jan conveyed food into himself. When Joachim had run to him to tell him of his approaching entrance into the cadet school, Jan was having his dinner; and he sat there cutting bread into chunks and silently listening. At last he said: “Well, is the young master glad?” And then Joachim became aware that he was not in the least glad; he actually felt he wanted to cry; but as there was no immediate pretext for that, he only nodded and said that he was glad.

Then there was the Iron Cross that hung in a glass-covered frame in the big drawing-room. It had belonged to a Pasenow who, in the year 1813, had held a high position in the army. Seeing that it always hung on the wall, the great fuss that was made when Uncle Bernhard received one too was somewhat puzzling. Joachim was still ashamed, now in 1888, that he had ever been so stupid. But perhaps he had been embittered merely because they had tried to make the cadet school more palatable to him by dangling the Iron Cross before him. In any case his brother Helmuth would have been a more suitable subject for the cadet school, and in spite of the years that had passed Joachim still considered it a ridiculous arrangement that the elder son had to take to the land and the younger to the army. The Iron Cross had left him quite indifferent, but Helmuth had been filled with wild enthusiasm when Uncle Bernhard had taken part in the storming of Kissingen with his division, the Goeben. In any case he wasn’t even a real uncle, but only a cousin of their father’s.

His mother was taller than his father, and everything on the home farm was managed by her. Strange how little attention Helmuth and he had paid to her; they had been like their father in that. They had ignored her stubborn and lackadaisical: “Don’t do that,” and were only annoyed when she added: “Look out, or your father will catch you.” And they weren’t in the least daunted when she employed her final threat: “Well, I’m really going to tell your father this time,” and scarcely minded even when she fulfilled the threat; for then their father only threw them an angry look and went on his way with his stiff, purposive stride. It was a just punishment on their mother for trying to side with the common enemy.

At that time the predecessor of the present pastor was still in office. He had yellowish white side-whiskers which were hardly distinguishable from the hue of his skin, and when he came to dinner on festival days he used to compare their mother with Empress Luise in the midst of her brood of children. That had been a little ludicrous, but it had made one proud all the same. Then the pastor had acquired yet another habit, that of laying his hand on Joachim’s head and calling him “young warrior”; for all of them, even the Polish maids in the kitchen, were already talking about the cadet school in Culm. Nevertheless Joachim was still waiting at that time for the final decision. At table one day his mother had said that she didn’t see the necessity of sending Joachim away; he could quite well enter later as an ensign; that was how it had invariably been done, and the custom had always been kept. But Uncle Bernhard replied that the new army required capable men and that in Culm a proper lad would soon find his place. Joachim’s father had remained disagreeably silent—as always when his wife said anything, for he never listened to her. Except, indeed, on her birthday, when he clinked glasses with her, and then he borrowed the pastor’s comparison and called her his Empress Luise. Perhaps his mother was really against his being sent to Culm, but one could put no dependence on her: she always finished by taking sides with his father.

His mother was very punctual. In the byre at milking time, and in the hen-house when the eggs were being collected she was never absent; in the morning one could always find her in the kitchen, and in the afternoon in the laundry, where she counted the stiff starched linen along with the maids. It was on one of these occasions that he had first heard the news.