367 had thrown his bread ration at the warder’s feet, screaming: “I insist on having bread, regulation weight, and not this damned plaster pulp!”

And this had precipitated the uproar, the riot. Yells, shouts, wails, singing and howling came from twelve hundred cells. “Grub! Grub! We’re starving!” The little town of Meienburg crouched beneath the shining white walls of the penitentiary. That uproar penetrated into every house, through every window. And there came a frightful crash. A thousand prisoners had beaten their stools against the iron doors.

Warders and orderlies ran through the corridors, trying to calm the rebels, unlocking the cells of the well-behaved prisoners. “Be reasonable … nobody in Germany gets better food … the dollar … the Ruhr … harvest crew will be organized at once and sent to the big estates. A packet of tobacco every week, meat every day … for the well-behaved.”

Slowly the noise died down. “Harvest crews … meat … tobacco … good conduct.” The news trickled into every cell and calmed the rumbling stomachs with hopes of repletion. And there was the prospect of the open sky, perhaps of escape. The last of the rioters, those who were still goading themselves into fury, were dragged by warders to the solitary confinement cells. “Well, then, see if you can live without the plaster pulp.”

The iron doors crashed to.

VII

In Countess Mutzbauer’s apartments in the Bayerischen district of Berlin, the lady’s maid Sophie was already awake in spite of the early hour. The room which she shared with the still-sleeping cook was so narrow that, in addition to the two iron beds, there was space only for two chairs, and she had to write her letter on the window sill.

Sophie Kowalewski had beautifully manicured hands, but they guided their pencil awkwardly. Downstroke, upstroke, pothook, comma, upstroke, downstroke … Ah, she would like to say so much! How she missed him, how slowly time went, still three years to wait and hardly six months gone! But Sophie, daughter of the overseer at Neulohe, had not learned to express her feelings in writing. If Hans had been with her, if it had been a question of talking or touching, she could have expressed anything, have made him mad with a kiss, happy with an embrace. But as things were …

She looked into the distance. How she would like to convey her feelings to him through this letter! Out of the windowpane a reflected Sophie stared at her, and involuntarily she smiled. A dark curl or two fell loosely over her forehead. Under her eyes, also, the shadows were dark. She ought to be using these hours to sleep thoroughly—but was there time for this when everything faded away, everything decayed before it was completely clear? Live for the moment, then. Today you were still alive.

However tired she might be in the mornings, her feet painful, her mouth stale from the liquors, the wine, the kisses of the night before, by evening she was again attracted to the bars. Dance, drink, and riot! There were plenty of gentlemen, flabby as the 100,000-mark notes, each fifty times a maid’s wages, stuffed in their pockets. Last night, too, she had been with one of these gentlemen—but what did it matter? Time ran, flew, galloped. Perhaps in the repeated embraces, in the features which bent over her, greedy and restless as her own, she was looking for Hans (now in prison).… But he, shining, swift, superior to them all, had no counterpart.

Sophie Kowalewski, who had escaped to the city from the hard work on the farm, was looking for—she didn’t exactly know what—something that would grip her even more. Life is unique, transient, she thought, when we die we are dead for a very long time, and when we get old—even over twenty-five—men will no longer look at us. Hans, oh Hans.… Sophie was wearing madam’s evening dress and didn’t care whether the cook saw it or not. Just as cook had her pickings from the tradespeople, so she, Sophie, lifted silk stockings and underwear from her mistress; neither could throw stones at the other.

It was nearly seven o’clock—so a quick finish. “And I remain, with passionate kisses, your ever-loving future wife, Sophie.” She did not attach any value to the word wife. She did not even know if she wanted to marry him, but she must use the word so that he would be given her letter in the penitentiary.

And the convict, Hans Liebschner, would get the letter, for he was not one of those who had been put into solitary confinement for roaring too madly. No, in spite of being scarcely half a year in prison, he had been promoted to orderly against all rules and regulations.