Little Man, What Now? (6 page)

‘We,’
thought Pinneberg, sadly, but he only asked: ‘What, as a general rule?’

‘As a general rule, this evening’s feast is an exception. Twice a week at least all we’ll have is fried potatoes and bread with margarine. Good butter—? Perhaps on Sundays. Margarine has vitamins too.’

‘But not the same ones …’

‘Right, but either we want to get ahead, or we gradually use
up what we’ve saved.’

‘No, no,’ he said hurriedly.

‘So, now let’s tidy the things away. I can wash up tomorrow morning early. Then I’ll pack up the first consignment and we’ll visit Mrs Scharrenhofer. It’s only polite.’

‘On the first evening?’

‘Straight away. She must know at once. I’m surprised she hasn’t put in an appearance by now.’

In the kitchen, which was really only an attic with a gas cooker, Lammchen said yet again, ‘Oh well, six weeks will be soon over.’

Back in the room, a flurry of activity developed. She took off all the little covers and bits of crochet and carefully laid them in a very neat pile. ‘Quick, Sonny, fetch a saucer from the kitchen. We don’t want her to think we’re keeping her pins.’

Finally: ‘There we are.’

She laid the packet of covers over her arm and searched around with her eyes: ‘And you take the clock, Sonny.’

He was still doubtful: ‘Should I really?’

‘You take the clock. I’ll go ahead and open the doors.’

And she really did go ahead, quite without fear, first across the little hall, then into a room like a cupboard with brooms and other such clutter, then through the kitchen …

‘Now that’s a real kitchen, Sonny! And all I’m allowed to do here is fetch water!’

 … then through a bedroom long and narrow as a roller-towel but containing two beds …

‘And she’s left her late husband’s bed standing here. Better than letting us sleep in it.’

 … and then into a little room, which was almost pitch-dark, so thick were the floor-length plush curtains hanging over the only window.

Mrs Pinneberg stopped in the doorway. ‘Good evening,’ she said, uncertainly, into the darkness. ‘We only wanted to say good
evening.’

‘One moment,’ said a tearful voice. ‘Just one moment. I’ll put the light on.’

Behind her, Pinneberg was doing something at a table and she heard a faint whirr from the precious clock. Doubtless he was moving it swiftly out of sight.

‘All men are cowards,’ thought Lammchen.

‘I’m just putting the light on,’ moaned the voice, still from the same corner. ‘You must be the young people? I’ve got to straighten myself up a bit first. I always cry a little in the evenings …’

‘Do you?’ asked Lammchen. ‘If we’re disturbing you … We only wanted to …’

‘No, no, I’ll put the light on. Stay here, young folk. I’ll tell you why I was crying, and I will put on the light …’

And now there really was light, or what old Mrs Scharrenhofer called light: a single dim bulb, high up near the ceiling, a murky twilight among satin and plush, a pallid, lifeless grey. And in the gloom stood a tall bony woman, the colour of lead, with a reddish long nose, moist eyes and thin grey-white hair in a grey alpaca dress.

‘The young people!’ she said, giving Lammchen a damp, bony hand. ‘Young folk, in my home!’

Lammchen clutched her packet of covers closely to her. She so hoped the old lady’s tear-clouded gaze would not light upon it. What a good thing her young man had got rid of the clock; perhaps they would be able to take it back unnoticed. Lammchen’s courage was gone.

‘But we really didn’t want to disturb you,’ said Lammchen.

‘How could you disturb me? Nobody comes here any more. Now when my good man was still alive! But it’s a good thing he isn’t.’

‘Was he very ill?’ asked Lammchen, and was aghast at her silly question.

But the old lady hadn’t heard it. ‘Look!’ she said. ‘Young people, before the war, we had a comfortable fifty thousand marks. And now that money’s all gone. How can it be all gone?’ she asked anxiously. ‘An old lady can’t spend that much, can she?’

‘Inflation,’ said Pinneberg, cautiously.

‘It can’t have all gone,’ said the old lady, unheeding.

‘I sit here reckoning it up. I’ve written it all down. I sit here, reckoning. Here it says: a pound of butter: three thousand marks … can a pound of butter cost three thousand marks?’

‘In the inflation …’ began Lammchen, joining in.

‘I’m going to tell you. I now know that my money’s been stolen. Somebody who rented here stole it. I sit and wonder who. But I can’t recall the names, so many people have lived here since the war. I sit and brood. I also realize it must have been someone really clever, because he falsified my housekeeping book so I wouldn’t notice. He turned three into three thousand without me realizing.’

Lammchen looked despairingly at Pinneberg. Pinneberg didn’t look up.

‘Fifty thousand … how can fifty thousand have all gone? I’ve sat here and reckoned up everything I’ve bought in the years since my husband died: stockings and a few blouses. I had a lovely trousseau and I don’t need much. I’ve written it all down and it doesn’t even come to five thousand, I’m telling you.’

‘But money has been devalued,’ Lammchen tried again.

‘He stole it,’ said the old lady mournfully, and bright teardrops flowed effortlessly from her eyes. ‘I’ll show you the books, I can see it now, the numbers are quite different later on, so many noughts.’

She stood up and went towards the mahogany secretaire.

‘You don’t need to do that,’ said Pinneberg and Lammchen together.

At that moment, it happened: the clock outside, which Pinneberg had put down in the old lady’s bedroom, struck a loud, brisk,
silvery nine.

The old lady stopped in her tracks. Head raised, she peered into the darkness, listening with half-open mouth and trembling lip.

‘What?’ she asked nervously.

Lammchen seized Pinneberg’s arm.

‘That’s my husband’s clock: his engagement present. It’s usually in the other room, surely?’

The clock had stopped striking.

‘Mrs Scharrenhofer, we wanted to ask you,’ Lammchen began.

But the old lady was not listening, perhaps she never listened to what other people said. She pushed the half-open door: there stood the clock, clearly visible even in the poor light. ‘The young people have brought me my clock back,’ whispered the old lady. ‘My husband’s engagement present. The young people don’t like it here. They won’t stay here either. No one stays …’

And as she spoke, the clock began to strike again, even faster and more glassily-sharp, stroke after stroke, ten times, fifteen times, twenty times, thirty times …

‘That comes from moving it. It can’t be moved any more,’ whispered Pinneberg.

‘Oh God, come away quickly!’ begged Lammchen.

They stood up. But in the doorway stood the old lady, staring at the clock, and wouldn’t let them by. ‘It’s striking,’ she said. ‘It’s keeping on striking. And then it will never strike again. I’m hearing it for the last time. Everything’s going. The money’s gone, too. Whenever the clock struck, I always thought: my husband heard that …’

The clock stopped.

‘Please, Mrs Scharrenhofer, I’m very sorry I touched your clock.’

‘It’s my fault,’ sobbed Lammchen. ‘It’s all my fault …’

‘Go, young people. Go away now. This had to be. Good night,
young folk.’

The two of them squeezed past fearfully, timid as children.

Suddenly the old lady called loud and clear: ‘Don’t forget to go and register with the police on Monday. Otherwise I shall have trouble.’

THE VEIL OF MYSTERY IS RAISED: BERGMANN AND KLEINHOLZ AND WHY PINNEBERG MUST NOT BE MARRIED

They didn’t rightly know how they got back to their own place, through the dark overstuffed rooms, clutching each other’s hands like frightened children.

The room looked ghostly enough itself as they stood close to each other in the dark. Even the light seemed to have a grudging quality as though it was vying with the dimness at the old woman’s next door.

‘That was awful,’ said Lammchen, drawing a deep breath.

‘Yes,’ he said. And then, after a while he repeated, ‘Yes. She’s mad, Lammchen. Pining about her money has turned her brain.’

‘She is mad. And I …’ The couple continued to clutch each other in the dark. ‘I’ve got to be here all day on my own and she can come in whenever she likes! No! No!’

‘Calm down, Lammchen. The other day she was quite different. Perhaps this was just the once.’

‘Young people …’ repeated Lammchen. ‘It was so ugly the way she said it, as if she had some secret we couldn’t know about. Oh, Sonny, Sonny, I don’t want to end up like her! I couldn’t be like her, could I?! I’m frightened.’

‘You’re Lammchen,’ he said, and took her in his arms. She was so helpless; so tall and yet so helpless, and coming to him for protection. ‘You’re Lammchen and you’ll stay Lammchen. How could
you ever be like old Mrs Scharrenhofer?’

‘You’re right. And it wouldn’t be good for the Shrimp for me to live here. He shouldn’t have anything to be frightened of; he needs a happy mother to be happy himself.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, and stroked her and rocked her. ‘Things will look after themselves; it’ll turn out all right.’

‘You say that. But you haven’t promised me that we’re going to move out. At once!’

‘But how can we? Have we got the money to pay for two flats for a month and a half?’

‘Oh, money!’ said she. ‘So I have to be frightened and the Shrimp stunted, all because of a bit of money!’

‘Money,’ he said. ‘Wicked money, lovely money.’

He rocked her back and forth in his arms. He suddenly felt old and clever, and things that mattered once didn’t matter any more. He could afford to be honest with her. ‘I’m not particularly gifted at anything, Lammchen,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to rise very far. We’re always going to have to struggle for money.’

‘Oh you,’ she said, in a sing-song voice, ‘You.’

The white curtains moved gently against the windows in the wind. A soft light radiated through the room. An enchantment drew them towards the open window, arm in arm, and they leaned out.

The countryside was bathed in moonlight. Far to the right there was a tiny flickering dot of light; the last gas-lamp on Feldstrasse. But before them lay the countryside, beautifully divided up into patches of friendly brightness, and deep soft shade where the trees stood. It was so quiet that even up here they could hear the Strela rippling over the stones. And the night wind blew very gently on their foreheads.

‘How beautiful it is,’ she said. ‘How peaceful!’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It does you good. Just breathe in the air, it’s not like your air in Platz.’

‘My air in Platz! I’m not in Platz any more. I don’t belong there any more. I’m in Green End, with Widow Scharrenhofer.’

‘With her? No one else?’

‘No one else …’

‘Shall we go downstairs again?’

‘Not now, Sonny, let’s lie here a bit longer. I’ve got something to ask you.’

‘Here it comes,’ he thought.

But she didn’t ask. She lay there in the window, the wind moving the fair hair on her forehead, laying it now this way, now that. He watched it.

‘So peaceful …’ said Lammchen.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Come to bed, Lammchen.’

‘Shan’t we stay up a little longer? We can lie in tomorrow as it’s Sunday. And I’ve got something to ask you.’

‘Well, ask!’

That sounded irritable; he got himself a cigarette, lit it carefully, took a long drag and said again, but in a markedly gentler tone: ‘Do ask, Lammchen.’

‘Won’t you tell me yourself?’

‘But I don’t know what you want to ask.’

‘You know,’ she said.

‘I don’t, really, Lammchen.’

‘You know.’

‘Lammchen, please be sensible. Ask me!’

‘You know.’

‘Well then, don’t.’ He was hurt.

‘Sonny,’ she said, ‘Sonny, do you remember when we sat in Platz in the kitchen? On the day we got engaged? It was all dark, and there were such a lot of stars and we went out onto the kitchen balcony.’

‘Yes,’ he said crossly. ‘I know all that. So …?’

‘Don’t you remember what we discussed?’

‘Hey, listen, we gossiped on about a whole mass of things. How am I supposed to remember all that!’

‘But we talked about something in particular. We even made a promise about it.’

‘I dunno what it was,’ he said shortly.

Before Mrs Emma Pinneberg, née Morschel, there lay this moonlit landscape, with the small gas lamp twinkling on the left. And straight opposite, still on this side of the Strela, was a cluster of trees, five or six of them. The Strela rippled and the night wind was very pleasant.

It was all very pleasant, and it would have been possible to let this evening be as it was: pleasant. But there was something that bored into Lammchen’s mind like an intrusive voice that said: this cosiness is a fraud, it’s all self-deception. You let things be pleasant and before you know what’s happened you’re up to your ears in trouble.

Lammchen turned her back to the landscape and said: ‘No, we made a promise. We took each other’s hands and promised that we would always be honest with each other, and have no secrets from each other.’

‘Correction: you promised me.’

‘You don’t want to be honest?’

‘Of course I do. But there are some things women don’t need to know.’

‘Oh,’ said Lammchen, quite squashed. But she quickly recovered and hurried on: ‘So your giving the driver five marks when the taximeter only said two marks forty, is that the sort of thing that we women don’t need to know?’

‘But he carried the trunk and the bed-bag upstairs!’

‘For two marks sixty? And why did you go around with your right hand in your pocket so no one could see the ring? And why did the hood have to be on the car? And why didn’t you go down with me to the shop earlier on? And why could people be offended
if we were married? And why …?’

‘Lammchen,’ he said, ‘Lammchen, I really don’t want to …’

‘It’s ridiculous, Sonny,’ she replied. ‘You simply mustn’t have any secrets from me, otherwise we’ll start lying to each other, and we’ll be just the same as everybody else.’