Sundays in the heather, the village bells, the afternoons and evenings with the servant girls, the fried bacon and barley, the care-free evening hours in the ale-house———
He can’t part with all these dreams so abruptly; he merely growls: “What silly questions you do ask.”
He pulls his shirt over his head and buttons up his tunic.
“What would you do, Tjaden?” asks Kropp.
Tjaden thinks only of one thing. “See to it that Himmelstoss doesn’t get past me.”
Apparently he would like most to have him in a cage and sail into him with a club every morning. To Kropp he says warmly: “If I were in your place I’d see to it that I became a lieutenant. Then you could grind him till the water in his backside boils.”
“And you, Detering?” asks Müller like an inquisitor. He’s a born schoolmaster with all his questions.
Detering is sparing with his words. But on this subject he speaks. He looks at the sky and says only the one sentence: “I would go straight on with the harvesting.”
Then he gets up and walks off.
He is worried. His wife has to look after the farm. They’ve already taken away two of his horses. Every day he reads the papers that come, to see whether it
80
