Little Man, What Now? (11 page)

‘No, Schulz can’t either. He’s in trouble with some girl, about maintenance. So be a sport.’

‘Not this time.’

‘But you never have anything planned.’

‘This time I have.’

‘You’re just being mean. I’m sure you haven’t.’

‘I do this time.’

‘I’ll work two Sundays for you Pinneberg.’

‘No, I can’t. And now shut up about it. I’m not doing it.’

‘Well, all right, if you’re going to be like that. And it was a special order from my Gruf!’ Lauterbach was wildly hurt.

That was how it began, and how it went on.

Two hours later Kleinholz and Pinneberg were alone in the office. The flies kept up a summery buzzing and humming. The boss was bright red, he’d certainly had a few glasses already and was in a good mood.

So it was in quite a peaceable way that he asked, ‘Will you do stable-duty tomorrow for Lauterbach, Pinneberg? He’s asked me
for the day off.’

Pinneberg looked up. ‘Dreadfully sorry, Mr Kleinholz. Tomorrow I can’t. I’ve already told Lauterbach.’

‘You can put it off. You’ve never had anything important on before.’

‘This time unfortunately I have, Mr Kleinholz.’

Mr Kleinholz looked searchingly at his book-keeper. ‘Listen, Pinneberg. Don’t make trouble. I gave Lauterbach leave. I can’t take it back.’

Pinneberg didn’t answer.

‘Look here, Pinneberg,’ Emil Kleinholz explained, in a friendly man-to-man way, ‘Lauterbach is a fool. But he is also a Nazi and his Group Leader is Rothsprack the miller. I don’t want to get into his bad books, because he always helps us out when we need to get something milled in a hurry.’

‘But I really can’t do it, Mr Kleinholz,’ insisted Pinneberg.

‘Schulz might have stood in,’ pondered Kleinholz, ‘but then he can’t either. He’s got a family funeral, and he’s due to inherit. So he has to go. You see why: otherwise the relations will take everything.’

‘What a scoundrel!’ thought Pinneberg. ‘Him and his women.’

‘Yes, Mr Kleinholz …’ he began.

But Kleinholz had got up. ‘As for me, I’d do it willingly, I’m not like that, as you know.’

‘You’re not like that, Mr Kleinholz,’ confirmed Pinneberg.

‘But I’m afraid tomorrow, Pinneberg, I simply can’t. I have to go into the country and make sure that we get in the clover orders. We haven’t sold a thing yet this year.’

He looked expectantly at Pinneberg.

‘I must go on a Sunday, Pinneberg, because I’m sure of finding the farmers at home.’

Pinneberg nodded. ‘Supposing old Kube distributed the feed for once, Mr Kleinholz!’

Kleinholz was indignant. ‘Old Kube! I, give the key to the granary to old Kube! He’s been here since Father’s day, but he’s never held the key. No, no, Mr Pinneberg, you see you’re the only man for the job. You work tomorrow.’

‘But I can’t, Mr Kleinholz!’

Kleinholz was astounded. ‘But I’ve just explained. No one’s got the time but you.’

‘But I haven’t got the time, Mr Kleinholz!’

‘Mr Pinneberg, you can’t ask me to stand in for you tomorrow just for a whim. What do you have on tomorrow?’

‘I have …’ he began. ‘I must …’ he continued, then fell silent. On the spur of the moment, he couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘There you are you see. I can’t let my clover business go to rack and ruin just because you don’t feel like it. Mr Pinneberg! Be reasonable.’

‘I am reasonable, Mr Kleinholz. But I definitely can’t.’

Mr Kleinholz got up and walked backwards to the door, keeping a sorrowful eye on his book-keeper. ‘I was wrong about you, Mr Pinneberg,’ he said. ‘Very wrong.’

And slammed the door.

Lammchen was naturally of the same opinion as her young man.

‘Why ever should you? And I think it was awfully mean of the others to drop you in it like that. In your place I’d have told the boss that Schulz was lying about the funeral.’

‘You don’t do things like that to your colleagues.’

Lammchen regretted her thought. ‘No, of course not. You’re quite right. But I’d tell Schulz a thing or two. I’d tell him.’

‘I will tell him, Lammchen. I will.’

And there they were, the two of them, on the little train to Maxfelde. The train was jam-packed, despite the fact that it left Ducherow at the early hour of six a.m. And Maxfelde itself, with the
Maxsee and the Maxe was a disappointment—noisy, crowded and dusty. Thousands of people had come from Platz and there were hundreds of cars and tents on the beach. Nor was there any chance of a rowing-boat; the few there were had been taken hours ago.

Pinneberg and his Emma were newly married; they yearned for solitude. All this hurly-burly appalled them.

‘So let’s move on,’ suggested Pinneberg. ‘It’s all woods and water and mountains round here …’

‘But where to?’

‘I don’t mind. Just away from here. We’ll find somewhere.’

And they did find somewhere. At first the woodland path was fairly wide and there were crowds of people walking along it, but then Lammchen said that it smelled of fungus here under the beeches and she lured him away from the path. They ran ever deeper into the green, and suddenly they were in a meadow between two wooded slopes. They climbed up the other side holding each other’s hands, and when they were at the top they came to a fire-break which cut ever deeper through the loneliest depths of the forest, uphill and downhill, and they wandered along it.

Above them the sun rose, slowly, gradually, and now and then the sea-wind from the far-distant Baltic gusted into the tops of the beeches, stirring them into a glorious burst of rustling. That sea-wind had been in Platz too, where Lammchen’s home had been in the far-distant past, and she told her young man about the only summer holiday of her life, when she had spent nine days in Upper Bavaria with three other young girls.

And he grew talkative too and talked about how he had always been alone, how he didn’t like his mother, and how she had never bothered about him and he had been in the way of her and her lovers. Also, she had a dreadful profession, she was … it took him a long while to bring out the confession that she was a hostess in a nightclub.

That set Lammchen thinking, and she almost regretted that
letter, because a hostess in a nightclub was indeed something quite different, though Lammchen wasn’t at all clear what the function of a hostess was since she had never been in a nightclub, and what she had heard about such ladies didn’t seem to fit the age of her young man’s mother. In short, it would most probably have been better to put ‘Dear Madam’. But now was of course not the moment to talk about it to Pinneberg.

They walked for a long while in silence, hand in hand. But just as the silence was growing too heavy and they felt a distance coming between them, Lammchen said: ‘My darling Sonny, aren’t we so … so happy!’ and raised her lips to his.

Suddenly the wood lightened in front of them and they stepped out into the brilliant sunshine of a huge clearing. Directly opposite was a high sandy hill and at the top a crowd of people were busying themselves around a curious contraption. Suddenly the contraption rose up, and sailed through the air.

‘A glider!’ shouted Pinneberg. ‘Lammchen, a glider!’

He was greatly excited, and tried to explain to her how the thing could go higher and higher without an engine. But as he wasn’t very clear about it himself, Lammchen didn’t understand much, but she said ‘Yes’ and ‘of course’ very dutifully.

Then they sat down at the edge of the wood, breakfasted copiously from their picnic, and drank the thermos dry. The big, white, circling bird sank, and rose again and finally settled on the ground a long way off. The people who had been on the hill top rushed after it; it had gone a fair way, and by the time the couple had finished their breakfast and Pinneberg had lighted his cigarette, they were only just beginning to drag the plane back.

‘Now they’re going to drag it up the hill again,’ Pinneberg explained.

‘What a performance though! Why doesn’t it go on its own?’

‘Because it doesn’t have an engine, Lammchen. It’s a glider.’

‘Haven’t they the money for an engine? Are they that
expensive? It looks like a lot of bother to me.’

‘But Lammchen …’ and he wanted to explain it again.

But Lammchen wrapped herself tightly in his arms saying: ‘Oh, isn’t it great that we’ve got each other, Sonny my darling!’

And at that moment, it happened.

Along the sandy road which ran beside the wood a car had come creeping as though on carpet slippers, and by the time the two had noticed it, and broken apart in embarrassment, it was almost upon them. In principle they should have been seeing the faces of the passengers in profile; in fact, these were all turned towards them. And they were astonished faces, stern and indignant faces.

Lammchen didn’t understand it; the stupid way those people stared as though they had never seen a couple kissing before, and especially the conduct of her young man, who sprang up, babbling something incomprehensible, and made a deep bow towards the car.

But at that point all the faces suddenly reverted, as if on a secret command, to the profile position; no one acknowledged Pinneberg’s magnificent bow, and with a shrill hoot the car accelerated and disappeared among the bushes and trees. They caught one more flash of its red paint, and then it was gone. Gone.

Sonny was left standing, as white as a corpse, his hands in his pockets, murmuring: ‘We’re done for, Lammchen. Tomorrow he’ll throw me out.’

‘Who will? Who?’

‘Kleinholz of course! Ah God, you don’t know, do you? That was the Kleinholzes.’

‘Oh God,’ echoed Lammchen, and drew a deep breath. ‘Now that’s what I call bad luck.’

And then she took her young man like a big son in her arms and comforted him as best she could.

HOW PINNEBERG WRESTLES WITH THE ANGEL AND MARIECHEN KLEINHOLZ, BUT IT’S STILL TOO LATE

Hard on the footsteps of every Sunday comes Monday, however firmly one may believe at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning that it’s light-years away.

But it comes, it comes ineluctably, and the common round begins again. At the corner of Market Place, where Pinneberg always met Kranz, the town clerk, he looked round, and lo, there was Kranz approaching, and when the two men were almost level, they raised their hats, and greeted each other.

After they had passed each other, Pinneberg held out his right hand; the wedding-ring sparkled golden in the sun. Slowly Pinneberg twisted the ring off his finger, slowly he reached for his wallet, and then swiftly and defiantly he put the ring on again. Standing tall, with his wedding-ring on his finger, he went to meet his fate.

His fate wasn’t on time. Even the punctual Lauterbach wasn’t there on that particular Monday, and not one of the Kleinholzes had shown up.

Must be in the stable, thought Pinneberg, and busied himself in the courtyard. There stood the red car, being washed. ‘If only you’d broken down at ten yesterday morning,’ thought Pinneberg, and said aloud, ‘Boss not up yet?’

‘All asleep still, Mr Pinneberg.’

‘Who fed the horses yesterday?’

‘Old Kube did, Mr Pinneberg, Kube.’

‘Aha,’ said Pinneberg, and went back into the office.

There he found Schulz had just dawdled in, when it had already turned eight-fifteen, yellowish green in complexion and jaundiced in humour. ‘Where’s Lauterbach?’ he asked crossly. ‘Is the swine playing sick, today when we’ve got so much work on?’

‘Looks like it,’ said Pinneberg. ‘Lauterbach never comes in
late. Had a good Sunday, Schulz?’

‘Damnable!’ Schulz burst out. ‘Damnable! Damnable!’ He sank into brooding silence, then began, wildly: ‘You remember, Pinneberg, I told you once, but you won’t remember, eight or nine months ago I went to Helldorf to a dance, a real knees-up with the local yokels. And this girl now says I’m the father of her child and have got to fork out. I won’t do it. I’ll accuse her of perjury.’

‘How will you do that?’ asked Pinneberg, and thought: ‘He’s got his troubles too.’

‘I spent the whole of yesterday in Helldorf finding out who else she … But those stupid peasants all stick together. She can go ahead and perjure herself—if she dares!’

‘Supposing she does dare?’

‘I’ll tell the judge what for. Would you believe it, Pinneberg, now tell me honestly: I danced with her twice, and then I said: “Would you care to come outside, my dear, it’s so smoky in here.” And then and there … We only missed one dance. You see what I mean. And it’s only me who could be the father? It’s crazy.’

‘If you can’t prove anything.’

‘I’ll say she’s perjuring herself, and the judge will see the point. How could I pay, anyway? You know yourself, on our salary.’

‘Today’s hiring and firing day,’ said Pinneberg quietly and casually.

But Schulz didn’t hear. He only groaned: ‘And alcohol always makes me so sick …!’

At twenty past eight, Lauterbach entered.

Oh Lauterbach! Oh Ernst! Oh poor Ernst Lauterbach!

A black eye: one. Left hand in bandages: two. Cuts all over the face: three, four, five. A sort of black silk hood over the back of the head, and a pervasive smell of chloroform: six, seven. And that nose: that swollen, bloody nose! Eight! And that lower lip, partially split, thick, negroid: nine! Knockout Lauterbach! General conclusion: Ernst Lauterbach had spent Sunday out among the
local inhabitants, recruiting for his political ideas with zeal and dedication.

His two colleagues danced excitedly around him.

‘Oh boy, oh boy, you have been mauled around.’

‘Oh Ern, Ern, you never learn.’

Lauterbach sat down, very stiffly and carefully. ‘What you can see is nothing at all. You should see my back.’

‘Why on earth …?’

‘That’s the way I am! I could very well have stayed at home today, but I thought of you, when there’s so much to do.’

‘And today is hiring and firing day,’ said Pinneberg.

‘And the one who isn’t there will be thrown to the dogs.’

‘Listen, we’re not having any of that. We’ve given our word of honour.’

Emil Kleinholz entered.

On that morning Kleinholz was unfortunately sober, so sober indeed that he smelled the beer and spirits emanating from Schulz as he came through the doorway. He struck the tone for the day at once: ‘Workless again, gentlemen? I’m glad it’s hiring and firing day; I’m going to make one of you redundant.’ He grinned. ‘Not much work about, is there?’