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up! Get the money and see that they clear out of my yard.’
    ‘But, Herr Hackendahl,’ said the driver reproachfully, ‘they’re mere children and it’s true love straight from the songbook.’ Slowly Piepgras removed the hood of his cab and undid the apron. Quite a lot of people were looking on – drivers tired from the night shift and others arriving fresh for the day’s work. Nor were Otto and Rabause inclined to miss anything – old Piepgras was always up to something. Even the women in the house had smelled a joke and were again looking out of the window, thirteen-year-old Heinz between them.
    It was no unpleasant sight. Even if they had got into the cab drunk, the pair now slept as sweetly as children and, as was fitting, her head lay on his breast and they were holding hands as though they wished to be together even in sleep …
    ‘Well, Herr Hackendahl, did I lead you up the garden path? Does you good, doesn’t it? To see this in the Imperial city of Berlin, where the tarts can’t help treading on each other’s heels. But there’s something of everything in Berlin …’
    Who can say what passed through old Hackendahl’s mind at the sight of those two lovers? He too had been young once and saw that this was still puppy love, something light, something happy …
    But Piepgras had mentioned tarts and Hackendahl may well have recollected how his daughter would sometimes sneak into a café with a very bad name, or thought of his son who had stunk of cheap perfume that very morning. With a bound he was on the cab, shaking the sleepers and yelling: ‘Wake up! Clear out of my yard, you!’
    It was the young girl who woke first. Starting up, she gazed at the unfamiliar place and the unknown faces looking at them with surprised and sullen expressions; naturally she could not know that this had nothing to do with her but was a result of Iron Gustav’s outburst. Seizing her friend’s hand she pulled him out of his seat, crying:
‘Erich, do wake up. What has happened?’ And she was off, picking up her long skirts and running across the yard to the gate, her Erich behind her.
    Old Hackendahl, however, quite enraged by the name of Erich, ran beside them, storming, while Piepgras, who had never expected his little joke to end thus, ran imploringly on the other side: ‘Herr Hackendahl, what are you doing? The gentleman hasn’t paid me yet. Stop, sir! Stop and pay me my fare.’
    But the young girl and the young man ran quicker than ever, away from the sullen faces into the fresh, blue June morning.
    At first old Hackendahl remained standing. He stood beneath the stone gatepost with the golden ball, wiped his face and looked, wide awake, into all the faces. However, the faces all turned away, embarrassed. Each got on with, or pretended to get on with, his work. Iron Gustav went silently into the yard, shouting at only half-strength as he went, ‘Finish up, Otto!’ and disappeared into the house.
    The yard immediately became a turmoil of secrets and rumours, at their thickest around the now heavily breathing Piepgras, who had just returned. He had not been able to catch the young people. Love that night had got off scot-free.
§ XI
    In the Hackendahl household the breakfast coffee always appeared on the stroke of seven, and whatever his feelings may have been this morning, Iron Gustav stood erect at the head of the table at seven o’clock precisely, listening to Heinz saying grace. Then there was a shuffling of chairs and feet and Mother ladled out the porridge.
    In the silence they could hear the spoons scraping on the plates, and first one then the other looked at Erich’s empty chair. Now and then the mother, thinking of her hungry son in the cellar, sighed and muttered: ‘Oh God!’ but no one took any notice until she complained: ‘You’re not eating again this morning. What’s the matter with you all? At least you might, Bubi. You’ve no reason to starve.’
    Heinz looked shrewdly at his father and