Free Little Apple by Leo Perutz Page B

egg, were sufficient to cover his travelling expenses. Now that nothing humanly foreseeable could prevent him from putting his plan into effect, Vit¬torin regained his peace of mind and emotional poise. The phantom that had taken possession of his brain granted him a brief spell of relaxation before plunging him into a world of adventure.
    He had resolved to give no further thought to his mission, as he termed it, until that mission summoned him away. He was on leave, so to speak, but there were obligations to fulfil even now. He wanted to devote his remaining days of freedom to the people who had a claim on him: his father, his sisters, his employer, and the girl who loved him. He would give none of them cause for complaint.
    He was first in the office at eight each morning. Having still to be assigned specific duties, he helped out wherever he was needed. In an effort to make himself useful and pull his weight, he performed all kinds of menial work. He answered the telephone, added up long columns of figures, and typed letters dictated to him by junior colleagues. At home he was always ready to look through his brother's French exercises, fetch books and sheet music from the lending library for his sisters, or play a game of chess with his taciturn, pipe-smoking, careworn father, who had retired into his shell. When plans for the coming week - a visit to friends, for instance, or a Sunday afternoon outing - were under discussion in the family circle, he would listen in silence with an indulgent, almost imperceptible smile that gave no inkling of how remote he felt from all such concerns.
    The evenings he spent with Franzi, who would emerge from her office to find him waiting at the end of the street in his old army tunic. They frequented cinemas, wine cellars, or small suburban inns, but wherever they went there were people. Never alone with him for a moment, Franzi grew tired of waiting. She would happily have shared a small bed-sitter with him as his wife or mistress, no matter which, but she realized that this wouldn't happen overnight. There were too many hurdles to surmount. Franzi became doubly impatient for the day when they would be all by themselves. She made cryptic allusions to that day, the first of December, without betraying any of the little surprises she had prepared for their assignation in her parents' apartment. She had borrowed a gramophone and some of the latest dance records from a girl at the office. Her other acquisitions included a small supply of wood and coal, a bottle of brandy, and the ingredients for a bowl of punch: rum, lemons and sugar - all of them things that had long possessed rarity value.
    Two glasses of wine were enough to make Franzi frolicsome and exuberant. She would begin to take an interest in the other male customers and throw them flirtatious glances, and when these evoked a response - when someone covertly raised his glass to her or made some jocular remark - she would turn to Vit¬torin with a look of helpless bewilderment, as if to ask him what the man was after. Later, her high spirits abruptly gave way to dejection. She would rest her head on Vit¬torin's shoulder and sob till the tears streamed down her cheeks. She never omitted to explain the reason for her fit of the blues: she was crying because of the dismal autumn weather, or because her boss had shouted at her during the day, or because her mother wouldn't allow her to keep a canary, or simply because life was so sad and wonderful and short.
    After walking her home, Vit¬torin often looked in at the Café Élite, where Kohout would interrupt his game of billiards to report progress. Things were shaping nicely. The Rumanian route had been abandoned because East Galicia was far more accessible: to obtain an entry permit you had only to feign a wish to visit the grave of a brother killed in action there. Once in East Galicia, Kohout declared, you were home and dry. All that remained was to get through the Red Army's