Free An Old Heart Goes A-Journeying by Hans Fallada Page A

long ago, and had them out on the mat—this is a breach of the peace, I’ll have you know. Now then, out of this yard, all of you!” shouted the constable. “You’ve no business on private property. Get a move on, Frieda! Stand aside, young man!”
    Still linked to his prisoner, he managed to bustle and push them all out of the yard, and then shouted, “Shut the yard door, Gottschalk, and see that none of them get in again. Only the sisters and yourself—and perhaps the Professor—where on earth is the old chap? . . . Well, never mind—now I’ll make a start.”
    Constable Gneis then hammered briskly on the door and shouted, “Police! Open in the name of the law, Herr Schlieker—or I’ll kick your old door to bits!”
    In the meantime, the Professor was standing alone in the Schliekers’ garden. The departing wave of people had swept him out of the yard, and to avoid it he had stepped round a corner of the house. Here, in solitude, he felt at ease; again the whole affair was more than he could stand—the crowd and the shouting, the turmoil of events past and to come, in which he was so grievously involved.
    He vaguely heard the hammering on the door, the policeman’s lusty shouts, then he sat down heavily on a bench that stood in an arbor of jasmine, lilac, and honeysuckle, placing his black clerical hat beside him. Vacantly he stared at the few surviving wild flowers by his feet, vacantly he listened to the rising hubbub from the yard.
    A sudden sound from near at hand made him start. A back door from the house into the garden had opened, and a face peered cautiously out. Professor Kittguss knew that face and was afraid.
    But it did not see the Professor in his arbor—
    “Off with you, Marie!” said Frau Schlieker. “There’s no one here—the Schlieker family will be one too many for them yet!”
    “Oh, please don’t,” cried an imploring voice that made the Professor listen. “The children might catch cold on the water.”
    “Nonsense!—they can’t catch cold in half an hour! Do what I tell you for once in your life, Marie, and I’ll make it up to you, truly I will. I won’t have them all after us like this—the five sisters, the parish clerk, thewhole village, and now that pompous old fool of a policeman—they shan’t put it over on us. Now do as I say, Marie. We’ll hand over the children ourselves tomorrow, I promise, but not today, not to
these
brutes. . . .”
    The girl seemed to hesitate and ponder.
    “Now please, Marie,” urged the woman.
    “And we’ll take them to the office tomorrow, for sure? You promise, Mali?”
    “On my sacred word of honor, Rosemarie!”
    “All right, I will. I’ve no use for any of them, not even the policeman, he just laughs at me. . . .”
    The Professor got up.
    Then followed a scurry behind the bushes, through the garden and down to the lake. He could hear suppressed voices, the clink of a chain, and the whimper of a little child.
    As he stood irresolute, the woman again passed his hiding-place, and vanished into the house— What should he do—call the policeman?
    The woman came back with another child on her arm. Unseeing and unhearing, she ran past him. He followed her through the garden and down to the water. Rosemarie, his godchild, sat waiting in a boat, and the children sat or sprawled in the bottom.
    “Here you are, Marie,” cried Frau Schlieker. “You stay hidden among the reeds till it’s dark. And don’t let any of the children cry. . . .”
    “Rosemarie!” cried the Professor in an agonized tone.
    She looked up at him, and a flush grew gradually deeper over her face. . . . “Is that you, Godfather?” she whispered.
    “What are you trespassing here for?” hissed the woman.“I’m sick of the sight of you—you silly old man! Get along, Marie!”
    And she gave the boat a kick that made it rock.
    “I’m coming with you,” cried the Professor, his voice rising to something like a shriek. He jumped, bag in hand, soaring over