Jakob the Liar Read Free

corridor, a man in civilian clothes stands over him, looking very surprised; the man laughs, then turns serious again. What does Jacob think he is doing here? Jacob gets up and chooses his words very carefully. Not that he’s been out on the street after eight. No, the sentry who stopped him had told him it was eight o’clock and he was to report here to the duty officer.
    “And then you decided to eavesdrop at this door?”
    “I wasn’t eavesdropping. I’ve never been here before and didn’t know what room to go to. So I was just about to knock here.”
    The man asks no more questions and nods his head toward the end of the corridor. Jacob walks ahead of him until the man says, “Right here”; it is not the bureau chief’s room. Jacob looks at the man, then knocks. The man walks away, but there is no answer from inside.
    “Go in,” the man tells him, and disappears behind his own door after Jacob has pressed down the latch.
    Jacob in the duty officer’s room: he stays by the door, he hasn’t put his cap back on since he got caught in the searchlight. The duty officer is quite a young man, thirty at most. His hair is dark brown, almost black, slightly wavy. His rank is not apparent as he is in shirtsleeves; his jacket is hanging from a hook on the wall in such a way that the shoulder boards cannot be seen. Hanging over the jacket is his leather belt with his revolver. Somehow this seems illogical; it should really be hanging under the jacket. Surely a man first takes off his belt and then the jacket, but the belt is hanging over the jacket.
    The duty officer is lying on a black leather sofa, asleep. Jacob believes he is fast asleep; Jacob has heard many people sleeping, he has an ear for it. The man isn’t snoring, but he is breathing deeply and regularly; somehow Jacob must make his presence known. Normally he would clear his throat, but that won’t do here, that’s something you do when visiting good friends. Although actually, when visiting a very good friend you don’t clear your throat; you say, Wake up, Salomon, I’m here, or you simply tap him on the shoulder. But, even so, throat clearing won’t do, that’s somewhere between here and Salomon. Jacob is about to knock on the inside of the door but drops his hand when he sees a clock on the desk, its back to him. He has to know what time it is; there is nothing he has to know more urgently right now than this. The clock says 7:36. Jacob walks softly back to the door. They’ve been having you on, or not
they
, just that one fellow behind the searchlight, he’s been having you on, and you fell for it.
    Jacob still has twenty-four minutes left; if they are fair, he actually has twenty-four minutes plus the time his stay here has already cost him. He still doesn’t knock. He recognizes the black leather sofa the duty officer is lying on; he has sat on it himself. It used to belong to Rettig, Rettig the broker, one of the richest men in the town. In the fall of 1935 Jacob borrowed some money from him, at 20 percent interest. The whole summer had been so cool that he could hardly sell any ice cream at all. Business had never been so slow; not even his famous raspberry ice cream had sold well. Jacob had needed to start selling potato pancakes as early as August but hadn’t yet made enough money for the potatoes, so he had to borrow. And he had sat on the sofa in February 1936 when he returned the money to Rettig. It had stood in the outer office; Jacob had sat on it for an hour, waiting for Rettig. He remembered how surprised he was at the extravagance; there was easily enough leather for two overcoats or three jackets — and in the outer office!
    The duty officer turns on his side, sighs, smacks his lips a few times; a cigarette lighter slips out of his trouser pocket and drops on the floor. Jacob simply must wake him up now; it would be a bad thing for him to wake up without Jacob rousing him. He knocks on the inside of the door, the duty officer