for a little, I’m sure you need to rest. Come, I’ll help you to take off your things, you’ll see I can do it. Or if you would rather go into the front room at once, you can lie down in my bed for the present. That would be the most sensible thing.’
Georg stood close beside his father, who had let his head with its unkempt white hair sink on his chest.
‘Georg,’ said his father in a low voice, without moving.
Georg knelt down at once beside his father, in the old man’s weary face he saw the pupils, overlarge, fixedly looking at him from the corners of the eyes.
‘You have no friend in St. Petersburg. You’ve always been a leg-puller and you haven’t even shrunk from pulling my leg. How could you have a friend out there! I can’t believe it.’
‘Just think back a bit, Father,’ said Georg, lifting his father from the chair and slipping off his dressing gown as he stood feebly enough, ‘it’ll soon be three years since my friend came to see us last. I remember that you used not to like him very much. At least twice I kept you from seeing him, although he was actually sitting with me in my room. I could quite well understand your dislike of him, my friend has his peculiarities. But then, later, you got on with him very well. I was proud because you listened to him and nodded and asked him questions. If you think back you’re bound to remember. He used to tell us the most incredible stories of the Russian Revolution. For instance, when he was on a business trip to Kiev, and ran into a riot, and saw a priest on a balcony who cut a broad cross in blood on the palm of his hand and held the hand up and appealed to the mob. You’ve told that story yourself once or twice since.’
Meanwhile Georg had succeeded in lowering his father down again and carefully taking off the woolen drawers he wore over his linen underpants and his socks. The not particularly clean appearance of his underwear made him reproach himself for having been neglectful. It should have certainly been his duty to see that his father had clean changes of underwear. He had not yet explicitly discussed with his bride-to-be what arrangements should be made for his father in the future, for they had both of them silently taken it for granted that the old man would go on living alone in the old house. But now he made a quick, firm decision to take him into his own future establishment. It almost looked, on closer inspection, as if the care he meant to lavish there on his father might come too late.
He carried his father to bed in his arms. It gave him a dreadful feeling to notice that while he took the few steps toward the bed the old man on his breast was playing with his watch chain. He could not lay him down on the bed for a moment, so firmly did he hang on to the watch chain.
But as soon as he was laid in bed, all seemed well. He covered himself up and even drew the blankets farther than usual over his shoulders. He looked up at Georg with a not unfriendly eye.
‘You begin to remember my friend, don’t you?’ asked Georg, giving him an encouraging nod.
‘Am I well covered up now?’ asked his father, as if he were not able to see whether his feet were properly tucked in or not.
‘So you find it snug in bed already,’ said Georg, and tucked the blankets more closely around him.
‘Am I well covered up?’ asked the father once more, seeming to be strangely intent upon the answer.
‘Don’t worry, you’re well covered up.’
‘No!’ cried his father, cutting short the answer, threw the blankets off with a strength that sent them all flying in a moment and sprang erect in bed. Only one hand lightly touched the ceiling to steady him.
‘You wanted to cover me up, I know, my young sprig, but I’m far from being covered up yet. And even if this is the last strength I have, it’s enough for you, too much for you. Of course I know your friend. He would have been a son after my own heart. That’s why you’ve been playing him false all these years. Why else? Do you think I haven’t been sorry for him? And that’s why you had to lock yourself up in your office — the Chief is busy, mustn’t be disturbed — just so that you could write your lying little letters to Russia. But thank goodness a father doesn’t need to be taught how to see through his son. And now that you thought you’d got him down, so far down that you could set your bottom on him and sit on him and he wouldn’t move, then my fine son makes up his mind to get married!’
Georg stared at the bogey conjured up by his father. His friend in St. Petersburg, whom his father suddenly knew too well, touched his imagination as never before. Lost in the vastness of Russia he saw him. At the door of an empty, plundered warehouse he saw him. Among the wreckage of his showcases, the slashed remnants of his wares, the falling gas brackets, he was just standing up. Why did he have to go so far away!
‘But attend to me!’ cried his father, and Georg, almost distracted, ran toward the bed to take everything in, yet came to a stop halfway.
‘Because she lifted up her skirts,’ his father began to flute, ‘because she lifted her skirts like this, the nasty creature,’ and mimicking her he lifted his shirt so high that one could see the scar on his thigh from his war wound, ‘because she lifted her skirts like this and this you made up to her, and in order to make free with her undisturbed you have disgraced your mother’s memory, betrayed your friend, and stuck your father into bed so that he can’t move. But he can move, or can’t he?’
And he stood up quite unsupported and kicked his legs out. His insight made him radiant.
Georg shrank into a corner, as far away from his father as possible. A long time ago he had firmly made up his mind to watch closely every least movement so that he should not be surprised by any indirect attack, a pounce from behind or above. At this moment he recalled this long-forgotten resolve and forgot it again, like a man drawing a short thread through the eye of a needle.
‘But your friend hasn’t been betrayed after all!’ cried his father, emphasizing the point with stabs of his forefinger. ‘I’ve been representing him here on the spot.’
‘You comedian!’ Georg could not resist the retort, realized at once the harm done and, his eyes starting in his head, bit his tongue back, only too late, till the pain made his knees give.
‘Yes, of course I’ve been playing a comedy! A comedy! That’s a good expression! What other comfort was left to a poor old widower? Tell me — and while you’re answering me be you still my living son — what else was left to me, in my back room, plagued by a disloyal staff, old to the marrow of my bones? And my son strutting through the world, finishing off deals that I had prepared for him, bursting with triumphant glee, and stalking away from his father with the closed face of a respectable businessman! Do you think I didn’t love you, I, from whom you are sprung?’
Now he’ll lean forward, thought Georg, what if he topples and smashes himself! These words went hissing through his mind.
His father leaned forward but did not topple. Since Georg did not come any nearer, as he had expected, he straightened himself again.
‘Stay where you are, I don’t need you! You think you have strength enough to come over here and that you’re only hanging back of your own accord. Don’t be too sure! I am still much the stronger of us two. All by myself I might have had to give way, but your mother has given me so much of her strength that I’ve established a fine connection with your friend and I have your customers here in my pocket!’
‘He has pockets even in his shirt!’ said Georg to himself, and believed that with this remark he could make him an impossible figure for all the world. Only for a moment did he think
