Free Wolf Among Wolves by Hans Fallada Page A

Kowalewski girl wasn’t bad; she was sure to be up to her tricks in Berlin. But Amanda, Amanda Backs was by no means a back number either. Little Meier turned on his side, at last having repressed the uncomfortable thought that the Rittmeister had not actually said that the crops should not be brought in, but rather that one should be guided by the weather.
    No, Meier did not want to think of that now; he preferred to think of Amanda. He felt more alive, drew his knees up and grunted with pleasure. This caused the cigarette to drop out of his mouth but it didn’t matter; he didn’t need a cigarette, he had Amanda. Yes, they called him Little Meier, Black Meier—and when he looked at himself in the mirror he had to admit they were right. Big, round, yellowish owl’s eyes looked from behind thick lenses; he had a flat nose, blubber lips, ears that stuck out and a forehead hardly two inches high—as far as that goes, the man himself was hardly five feet.
    But that was just it: he looked so odd, so grotesque, had such a comically ugly mug, that the girls were all keen on him. When he had been still quite new at Neulohe and Amanda and her girl-friend had passed him, the friend said: “Amanda, you’ll need a step to reach up to him.” But Amanda had replied: “That doesn’t matter, he has such a sweet kisser.” That had been her way of declaring love; the girls here were like that, impudent and of a divine casualness. Either they were keen on you or they weren’t, but in any case they didn’t make a fuss about it. They were grand.
    Look at yesterday evening when Amanda had climbed through his window—as a matter of fact he wasn’t keen himself, he was too tired and the mistress had rushed out of the bushes! Not the Rittmeister’s lady—she would only have laughed, being herself not a bad sport—but the old lady, the mother-in-law, from the manor house. Any other girl would have shrieked or hidden herself or called on him for help; not so Amanda. He could remain out of it and be amused. “Yes, madam,” Amanda had said quite innocently. “I only want to check up the poultry accounts with the bailiff; he never has any time during the day.”
    “And you climb through his window for that!” the old lady, who was very pious, had shrieked. “You shameless creature.”
    “But the house is already locked up,” Amanda had replied.
    And as the old lady still hadn’t got her bellyful and couldn’t see that she was no match for the young of today, even with the help of religion and morals, Amanda had simply added: “This is my free time, madam. And what I do in my free time is my own business. And if you can find a better poultry maid for such low wages—but you won’t find one—then I can leave, of course; but not till tomorrow.”
    And she had insisted that he shouldn’t shut the window. “If she wants to stand there and listen, let her stand there, Hans dear. It’s all one to us, and perhaps she gets some pleasure out of it. After all, she didn’t get her daughter in solitary prayer.”
    Little Meier sniggered and pressed his cheek against his arm as if he were feeling the soft but firm body of his Amanda. Such a sport! She was just the right sort for a poor devil and bachelor. No soft stuff about love, faithfulness and marriage, but good at her work and ready with her tongue; so downright and free-spoken that sometimes she made you wince. But this was not surprising when you came to consider that she had grown up in the four years of war and the five years afterward.
    “If I don’t snatch my food myself I don’t get any. And if I don’t smack you, you’ll smack me. Always stand up for yourself, young man, even against that old woman. She’s had her good times—why shouldn’t I have mine, just because they started a potty war and an inflation? It’s enough to make a cat laugh. After all, if I die, then as far as I’m concerned the world’s at an end. And she’ll have to squeeze out the tears