Little Man, What Now? (24 page)

And then the time had come for the men to pick up the dressing-table. Puttbreese used only one hand, the other was holding the mirror, and by the time they got back upstairs, the trunks were already closed, the wardrobe yawned empty, the drawers pulled out.

‘So let’s go,’ said Pinneberg.

Puttbreese took one end of both trunks, Lammchen and Sonny took one end each. On top lay a small suitcase, Lammchen’s smart bag, and the egg-crate with the china.

‘Quick march!’ said Puttbreese.

Lammchen cast one backward glance at the room. It had been her first room in Berlin, and it was hard to leave it. Oh no! she’d left the light on.

‘One moment!’ called Lammchen, ‘The light!’ and she let go her handle of the trunk.

First, her smart bag slipped off, it hit the floor with a not very loud crack, the suitcase made a little more noise, but the egg-crate …

‘Young woman,’ said Puttbreese’s deep bass, ‘if they didn’t hear that they deserve to lose their money.’

The Pinnebergs stood like sinners caught in the act, their eyes fixed on the door of the Berlin-style room. And, right enough, the door opened, and in it, with laughing, reddened face, stood Holger Jachmann. The Pinnebergs stared at him. Jachmann’s face changed, he drew the door shut behind him, and took a step
towards the group. ‘Aha,’ he said.

‘Mr Jachmann,’ said Lammchen quietly, in a pleading voice. ‘Mr Jachmann, we’re moving! Please … you know why!’

Jachmann’s face had changed again, he looked thoughtfully at the young woman, there was a vertical line down his forehead and his mouth had half opened.

He took another step, and said, very quietly: ‘You shouldn’t be lifting cases in your condition.’

He took hold of the basketwork trunk with one hand, the suitcase with the other.

‘Off we go.’

‘Mr Jachmann,’ said Lammchen again.

But Jachmann did not speak another word. He carried the luggage silently down the stairs, put it onto the cart in silence, and received the Pinnebergs’ handshakes in silence. Then he watched them disappearing into the grey foggy street: a cart with their few things, a rather shabbily-dressed pregnant woman, a young nobody in pseudo-smart clothes, and a fat drunken animal in a blue work-shirt.

Mr Jachmann stuck out his upper lip and thought hard about it. There he stood, dinner-jacketed, elegant, spruce after his long deep bath of that afternoon. Then he sighed deeply and then went slowly up the stairs one by one. He shut the landing door, which was still standing open, looked briefly into the deserted room, shook his head, clicked off the light and went into the Berlin-style living-room.

‘Where have you been off to again?’ Mrs Pinneberg greeted him, from within the circle of guests. ‘With the young people again? I could get jealous, if I was the jealous type.’

‘Give me a brandy,’ said Jachmann, and drank it down.

‘By the way, the young people send you their love. They’ve just moved out.’

‘Moved out?’ queried Mrs Pinneberg.

And then she said a great many things, very angrily, very fast.

A BUDGET IS DRAWN UP AND THERE IS NOT ENOUGH MEAT. PINNEBERG FINDS HIS LAMMCHEN COMICAL

Late one dark afternoon Lammchen sat in her flat with a notebook in front of her, some loose sheets of paper, a pen holder, a pencil and a ruler. She wrote and added up, crossed something out and added something on. As she did so, she sighed, shook her head, sighed again, thought ‘It’s not possible’, and carried on reckoning.

The room was really cosy with its low-beamed ceiling and the warm red-brown mahogany furniture. It was not a modern room at all, and the master-carpenter had thought it quite in keeping to have a piece of embroidery with black and white pearls saying ‘Be true even unto death’ hanging on the wall. Lammchen too was quite in keeping, with her gentle face and her straight nose, in her voluminous blue dress with the little machine-lace collar. It was pleasantly warm in the room; the wet December wind occasionally buffeted the panes, but that only made everything more home-like.

Lammchen had finished what she was writing; she read it all through once more. It read as follows, with much underlining, and small and large letters:

Standard monthly budget for Johannes and Lammchen Pinneberg NB: not to be exceeded under any circumstances!!!!

The undersigned solemnly agree that they will not, under any circumstances or on any pretext, take out money from the kitty for any but the above purposes, or in excess of the amount stated. Berlin, 30 November.

Lammchen hesitated a moment, thinking, ‘Sonny’s going to get a shock’, then she took the pen and put her name at the bottom. She put everything tidily together and laid it in a compartment of the desk. Out of the middle section of the desk she took out a pot-bellied blue vase and shook out the contents onto the table: a few banknotes, a little silver, some coppers. She counted it: all it would come to was a hundred marks. She sighed gently, put the money in another compartment, and put the empty vase back in its place.

Then she went to the door, switched off the electric light, and settled comfortably in the big wicker chair in the window, her hands over her belly, her legs spread. A red glow shone through the translucent opening of the oven and danced gently to and fro on the ceiling, stopped, trembling, for a long while, then started to dance again. It was so lovely to sit in your own home, alone in the darkness, waiting for your husband; perhaps the baby would move inside. She felt so big, so wide, so overflowing. It reminded her of the sea, the sea rose and fell too, flowing out all the time. She didn’t know the purpose of that either, but it was good that it was so.

Lammchen slept, her mouth half open, her head leaning on one shoulder, a swift happy nap, which lifted her and comforted her, so that she was immediately awake and alert the moment her Sonny switched on the light. ‘How’s things?’ he said. ‘You sitting in the dark, Lammchen? Has the Shrimp shown signs of life?’

‘No, not yet. Hello, husband.’

‘Hello, wife.’ And they gave each other a kiss.

He laid the table and she prepared the food. She said rather hesitantly. ‘There’s cod with mustard sauce today. It was so nice and cheap.’

‘Very good,’ said he. ‘I like fish now and then.’

‘You’re in a good mood,’ she said. ‘Did it go well today? How’s the Christmas trade?’

‘So-so, starting up a bit. People are scared to buy.’

‘Did you sell well?’

‘Yes, I was lucky today. I sold over five hundred marks’ worth.’

‘You must be the best salesman they have.’ ‘No, Lammchen. Heilbutt is better. And Wendt is at least as good. But there’s going to be an innovation.’

‘What? It can’t be anything good.’

‘There’s a new organizer coming. He’s going to reorganize the whole business, find ways of economizing, that sort of thing.’

‘They can’t economize any more on your wages.’

‘There’s no telling how they think. He’ll find something. Lasch heard he’s getting three thousand marks a month.’

‘What?’ asked Lammchen. ‘Three thousand marks, and Mandels call that economizing?’

‘Yes. He’s going to have to cut Mandels’ costs by that amount. He’ll find something.’

‘But how?’

‘They’re saying that every salesman is going to have it laid down how much they have to sell, and if they don’t they’re sacked.’

‘That’s mean! What if the customers don’t come, or they don’t have any money, or they don’t like what’s for sale? That sort of thing oughtn’t to be allowed.’

‘Not only is it allowed,’ said Pinneberg. ‘They’re all mad about it. They say it’s clever, it’ll save money, because they’ll find out who’s no good. It’s all rubbish. Lasch for example, he’s a bit nervous. He was just saying today that if they measured him by his sales-pad, he’d always be afraid he wouldn’t make it and he’d be so nervous he wouldn’t sell anything!’

‘And anyway what does it matter,’ said Lammchen, flaring up, ‘If he really doesn’t sell very much and isn’t so good at the job? What sort of people are they to take away a person’s job and their wages and their happiness just like that? What are the weaker meant to do: disappear? Measuring a person by how many pairs of trousers he can sell!’

‘You’re getting very worked up, Lammchen!’

‘I am. That sort of thing makes me very angry!’

‘But what they would say is that they don’t pay a person for being nice, but for selling a lot of trousers.’

‘Of course that’s not true.’ said Lammchen. ‘That’s not true, Sonny. Of course they want to have decent people. But what they’re doing now, to the workers for some time and now to us, is creating nothing but wild beasts, and—I tell you, Sonny—they’ve
got something coming to them.’

‘Of course they have,’ said Pinneberg. ‘Most of the people at our place are Nazis already.’

‘Well you can keep that,’ said Lammchen. ‘I know what we’ll be voting.’

‘Oh yes, what? Communist?’

‘Of course.’

‘Let’s think it over,’ said Pinneberg. ‘I always feel I want to, but then I can’t quite bring myself to do it. We’ve got a job at the moment anyhow; we don’t have to yet.’

Lammchen looked thoughtfully at her husband. ‘Well, all right, Sonny,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk about it again before the next election.’

And with that they both got up from the remains of the cod and Lammchen washed up quickly and he dried.

‘Did you see Puttbreese about the rent?’ asked Lammchen suddenly. ‘All paid up,’ he said.

‘Then I’ll put the rest of the money away at once.’

‘Very good,’ he said and opened the desk, took out the blue vase, reached into his pocket, took the money out of his wallet, looked into the blue vase and said in astonishment: ‘There’s no more money left in it.’

‘No,’ said Lammchen firmly, and looked at her husband.

‘But how can that be?’ he asked, amazed. ‘There ought to be money left in there! Our money can’t be all used up.’

‘Oh yes, it is,’ said Lammchen. ‘Our money’s gone. Our savings have all gone, so has the insurance. All of it. From now on we have to manage on your salary!’

He became more and more confused. It just couldn’t be that Lammchen, his Lammchen, was cheating him. ‘But I saw money in the pot yesterday or the day before. I’m certain there was a fifty-mark note left in there and a load of little notes.’

‘It was a hundred,’ said Lammchen.

‘And where’s it gone?’ he asked.

‘It’s gone,’ she said.

‘But …’ Suddenly he was vexed. ‘Damn it, what have you bought with it? Just tell me.’

‘Nothing,’ she replied. Then, as she saw he was about to get really angry: ‘Don’t you get it, Sonny? I’ve put it aside, in a safe place. It no longer exists for us. Now we have to get by on your wages.’

‘But why put it aside? All we have to do is say we’re not going to use it.’

‘It wouldn’t work.’

‘That’s your story.’

‘Listen, Sonny. We always wanted to get by on your wages. We even wanted to save out of them, and where are our savings? Even the extra money we got has gone.’

‘How did it happen?’ said he, becoming thoughtful. ‘We haven’t lived extravagantly.’

‘First of all there was our engagement, when we were travelling back and forth all the time, and we went out a lot.’

‘And that disgusting old Sesame and his fifteen marks. I’ll never forgive him for that.’

‘And our wedding,’ said she. ‘That cost money too.’

‘And the things we bought to start off with. The pots and the cutlery, the broom and the bed linen, and my eiderdown.’

‘We went on a lot of excursions too.’

‘Then there was the move to Berlin.’

‘Yes and there was …’ she stopped.

‘The dressing-table,’ he said courageously.

‘And the Shrimp’s layette.’

‘And we bought his cot.’

‘And we’ve still got a hundred marks left!’ she concluded, beaming.

‘Well, there you are,’ he said, highly gratified also. ‘We bought
a whole lot of things. I don’t know what you’re bleating about.’

‘That’s all very well,’ she said in an altered tone. ‘We have bought all kinds of things. But we ought to have been able to do most of that without dipping into our reserves. You see, Sonny, it was very nice of you not to give me housekeeping money but just let me take what I needed out of the blue pot. But it made me reckless. I sometimes dipped in when it wasn’t really necessary, like last month I got the veal cutlets and the bottle of Moselle to celebrate moving in here.’