Three Comrades
Chapter I
The sky was yellow as brass, not yet hidden by the smoke from the chimney stacks.
Behind the roofs of the factory the radiance was especially bright.
The sun must be just rising.
I looked at my watch; not eight o'clock.
A quarter of an hour too early.
Still I opened the gate, and put the petrol pump in readiness.
There was always a car or two passing at that hour wanting a fill.
Suddenly I heard behind me a harsh, high-pitched squeaking—like the sound of a rusty hoist being turned somewhere down under the earth.
I stood still and listened.
I walked back across the yard to the workshop and cautiously opened the door.
A ghost—stumbling about in the gloom!
It had a dirty white cloth wound about its head, its skirt was hitched up to give its knees clearance; it had a blue apron, a pair of thick slippers, and was wielding a broom; it weighed around fourteen stone, and was in fact our charwoman, Matilda Stoss.
I stood watching her.
With all the grace of a hippopotamus, she made her way staggering among the radiators, singing in a hollow voice as she went "the Song of the Bold Hussar."
On the bench by the window stood two cognac bottles, one of them almost empty.
Last night they had been full. I had forgotten to lock them away.
"But Frau Stoss!" I protested.
The singing stopped; the broom dropped to the floor.
The beatific smile died away.
Now it was my turn to be the ghost.
"Holy Jesus!" exclaimed Matilda, staring at me with bleary eyes. "I wasn't expecting you yet."
"That doesn't surprise me.
Did it taste good?"
"Sure and it did. But this is so awkward, Herr Lohkamp." She wiped her hand across her mouth. "I just can't understand—"
"Come, Matilda, that's an exaggeration.
You're only tight —full as a tick, eh?"
She maintained her balance with difficulty and stood there blinking like an old owl.
Gradually her mind became clear.
Resolutely she took a step forward.
"Man is human, Herr Lohkamp, after all. . .
I only smelled it at first . . . and then I took just one little nip, because well, you know, I always have had a weak stomach . . . and then . . . then I think the Devil must have got hold of me.
Anyway, you have no right to lead an old woman into temptation, leaving good bottles standing about like that. . . ."
It was not the first time I had caught her so.
She used to come to us for two hours every morning to clean up the workshop; and though one might leave as much money lying around as one liked she would never disturb it—but schnapps she could smell out as far off as a rat a slice of bacon.
I held up the bottles.
"Naturally! You've left the customers' cognac. . . . But the good stuff, Herr Koster's own—you've polished it all off."
A grin appeared on her weather-beaten face.
"Trust me, Herr Lohkamp; I'm a connoisseur!
But you won't tell, Herr Lohkamp—and me a poor widow?"
She unpinned her skirt.
"Then I'd better be going.
If Herr Koster should catch me . . ." She threw up her hands.
I went to the cupboard and opened it.
"Matilda. . . ."
She came waddling along.
I held up a rectangular brown bottle.
Protesting, she held up her hands.
"It wasn't me," she said.