Little Man, What Now? (23 page)

‘Oh why, oh why,’ thought Lammchen, ‘don’t we have just a little bit more money? If only we didn’t have to watch the pennies so! It would all be so simple, life would look so different, and we’d
just be able to look forward to the Shrimp without worrying about a thing.’

Oh! why not? And the sleek cars roared by, and there were delicatessens, and people who earned so much they didn’t know how to spend it all. No, Lammchen didn’t understand it. In the evening her young man was often home before her, waiting for her in their room.

‘Nothing?’ he would ask.

‘Not yet,’ she would reply. ‘But don’t lose heart. I’ve got the feeling I’ll definitely find something tomorrow. Oh Lord, my feet are so cold!’

But she was only saying that to head him off and keep him busy. It was true that she had cold feet, and they were wet too, but she was only saying that to distract him from the disappointment of not having a flat yet. Because what he did then was take her shoes and stockings off and rub her feet with a towel to warm them.

‘There you are,’ he said, satisfied. ‘Now they’re warm again, put your slippers on.’

‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘And tomorrow I’m sure to find something.’

‘Don’t overdo it,’ he said. ‘A day here or there won’t matter. I’m not losing heart yet.’

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I know that.’

But it was she that was soon going to lose heart. All this walking, walking, and what use was it? For the money they could lay out, there simply wasn’t anything decent to be had.

Recently she’d been going ever further east and north, where there were endless frightful blocks of flats, overcrowded, malodorous, noisy. And working-class women had opened the door to her and said: ‘Of course, you can look round, but you won’t take it. Not good enough for you.’

And she would go and look at the room with the stains on the wall … ‘Yes, we did have bugs, but we got rid of them with prussic
acid.’ The wobbly iron bedstead … ‘You can have a bedside rug if you like that sort of thing, but it only makes more work …’ A wooden table, two chairs, a few hooks on the wall and that was it. ‘A child? As many as you like. A few more shouting around the place won’t make any difference to me, I’ve got five already.’

‘Yes, I don’t know’ said Lammchen uncertainly. ‘Perhaps I’ll come back.’

‘No, you won’t’, said the woman. ‘I know what it’s like. I had a parlour once, and it’s not easy to settle for less.’

No, it wasn’t easy. That was rock-bottom, that was giving up everything you’d wanted out of life; a grimy wooden table with him on one side, her on the other, and the child whining in the bed.

‘Never!’ said Lammchen. Or, if she was tired, or had pains, she added very quietly: ‘At least not yet.’

No, it wasn’t easy to settle for that, the woman was right, and it turned out to be a good thing for Lammchen that it wasn’t because things did in fact turn out quite differently …

One afternoon she was standing in a little shop in Spenerstrasse where they sold soap; she was buying a packet of Persil, half a pound of soft soap, and a packet of bleaching soda. Suddenly she felt ill, everything went black, she just managed to grasp at the counter and hold herself up.

‘Emil!’ shouted the woman to her husband.

Then Lammchen was given a chair and a cup of hot coffee, she started to be able to see again, and whispered apologetically: ‘I’ve done so much walking.’

‘You shouldn’t. A bit of walking’s healthy in your condition, but not too much.’

‘But I have to!’ cried Lammchen despairingly. ‘I’ve got to find somewhere to live.’

And suddenly she was talkative; she told the couple who owned the shop everything about her fruitless search. She had to
talk to someone, just once. With Sonny she had to be brave all the time.

The woman was tall and thin with a sallow wrinkled face and black hair. She looked rather severe. He was a thick-set, red-faced fellow, looming in the background in shirtsleeves, corpulent.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Yes, young woman, they feed the birds in winter so they don’t starve, but the likes of us …’

‘Nonsense,’ said the wife. ‘Don’t talk rubbish. Think. Have you any ideas?’

‘Ideas?’ he asked. ‘Talk about the privileges of being a white-collar worker: don’t make me laugh. Privileged to take shit.’

‘I’m sure the young woman knows all about that without needing you to tell her. Especially not in that sort of language,’ growled the woman. ‘Come on, think! Don’t you know?’

‘Oh, don’t keep on at me: just say what you mean. What am I meant to know?’

‘Emil Puttbreese of course.’

‘Oh, I’m meant to be thinking of somewhere for the lady to live. Why didn’t you say so?’

‘How are things at Puttbreese’s? Is it still free?’

‘Is Puttbreese planning to let? What?’

‘Where he used to store the furniture. You know.’

‘That’s the first I ever heard of it. Now supposing he does want to let that poky place, this young woman’s never going to get to it up the step-ladder. Not in her condition.’

‘Rubbish,’ said the wife. ‘Listen to me, young woman. You go and lie down for a couple of hours, then come down to me around four and we’ll go to Puttbreese together.’

‘Thank you very, very much,’ said Lammchen.

‘If the young lady rents Puttbreese’s place,’ said the shirt-sleeved Emil, ‘I’ll eat my hat. My best hat, worth one mark eighty-five.’

‘Rubbish,’ said the soap-shop lady.

And then Lammchen went and lay down. ‘Puttbreese,’ she thought. ‘Puttbreese. As soon as I heard the name I knew something was going to come of it.’

And then she fell asleep, quite satisfied with her little faintingfit.

AN EXTRAORDINARY HOME. MR PUTTBREESE PULLS AND MR JACHMANN HELPS

When Pinneberg came home that evening, he was surprised by the sudden flash of a torch and a voice crying: ‘Stop! Hands up!’ ‘What’s going on?’ he asked grumpily; he wasn’t in a very good mood these days. ‘Where d’you get the torch?’

‘We’ll need it,’ called Lammchen cheerfully. ‘There’s no light on the stairs in our new palace.’

‘We’ve got somewhere?’ he asked breathlessly. ‘Oh Lammchen, have we really got somewhere?’

‘Yes, we have!’ rejoiced Lammchen. ‘We’ve got a proper home!’ She paused. ‘If you want it, that is, I didn’t actually agree to rent it yet.’

‘Oh no!’ he said, aghast. ‘Supposing someone else has gone and rented it in the meantime?’

‘They won’t,’ she soothed him. ‘I’ve got an option till tonight. We’ll go round there as soon as we’ve finished. Just eat up.’

During the meal he kept questioning her, but she didn’t give him any proper answers. ‘No, you have to see it for yourself. Oh Sonny, I do hope you feel like I do.’

‘So let’s go,’ he said, getting up while he was still chewing.

They went up Spenerstrasse, arms enlaced, then into the Alt-Moabit district.

‘A flat,’ he murmured. ‘A real honest-to-goodness home, just for us.’

‘It isn’t exactly a real flat’ said Lammchen apologetically. ‘Please don’t be shocked.’

‘You’re an expert torturer, you know!’

In front of them was a cinema, and they went through a wide doorway next to the cinema and came onto a courtyard. There are two sorts of courtyards; this was the other sort, more of a factory store-yard. A dim gas-lamp illuminated a large double door like the door of a garage. ‘Karl Puttbreese Furniture Store’ was written upon it.

Lammchen pointed somewhere into the dark courtyard. ‘That’s our toilet,’ she said.

‘Where?’ he asked. ‘Where?’

‘There,’ she said, pointing again. ‘The little door at the back.’

‘I think you’re having me on.’

‘And this is our entrance,’ said Lammchen, and opened up the garage door with ‘Puttbreese’ on it.

‘What …?’ said Pinneberg.

They entered a large storage shed, stuffed full of old furniture. Overhead the feeble light of the little torch was lost in a murky tangle of beams and spiders’ webs.

‘I hope,’ said Pinneberg, taking a deep breath, ‘this isn’t our livingroom.’

‘This is Mr Puttbreese’s store. He’s a carpenter, and he deals in old furniture on the side,’ explained Lammchen. ‘Wait and I’ll show you everything. See the black wall at the back, that doesn’t quite go up to the roof? We have to go up there.’

‘Oh yes,’ said he.

‘That’s the cinema. You saw the cinema, didn’t you?’

‘I did,’ he said, guardedly.

‘Oh Sonny, don’t pull such a face. You’ll see. So that’s the cinema, and we go up on top of it.’

As they approached, the lamp picked out a small wooden staircase, as steep as a ladder, going up the wall. On closer inspection
it turned out to be very much more of a ladder than a staircase.

‘Are you going up there?’ said Pinneberg doubtfully. ‘In your condition?’

‘I’ll show you,’ said she, and was already on the way up. ‘You have to hold on really tight. Now we’re nearly there.’

The roof was just above their heads. They went into a sort of vaulted tunnel, with Puttbreese’s furniture stacked in the dimness to their left.

‘Keep close on my footsteps or you may fall back down again.’

And now Lammchen opened a door, a real door up here in the roof, and put on the light, real electric light, and said: ‘Here we are.’

‘Yes, here we are,’ said Pinneberg, and looked around. And then he said: ‘Oh, there is something here!’

‘See,’ said Lammchen.

It was two rooms, or rather one, for the door between the two had been taken out. They were very low, with thick beams in the whitewashed ceiling. The room in which they were standing was the bedroom, with two beds, a cupboard, a chair and a washstand. That was all. No window.

But in the other room there was a handsome round table and a gigantic black oilcloth-covered sofa with white buttons, and a desk and a sewing-table. All old mahogany furniture. There was also a carpet on the floor. It looked wonderfully homelike, especially with the pretty white curtains at the windows. There were three windows, all very small with four panes.

‘Where’s the kitchen?’ he asked.

‘Here,’ she said, and opened the iron stove which had two ovens.

And the water?’

‘All there, my Sonny.’ And there turned out to be a tap and a sink between the desk and the stove.

‘And what does it cost?’ he asked, still doubtful.

‘Forty marks,’ she said. ‘That’s to say: nothing.’

‘What d’you mean, nothing?’

‘Listen and I’ll explain,’ she said. ‘Have you grasped why there’s that ladder and why the rooms are in such a funny place?’

‘No idea,’ he said. ‘A mad builder? There must be plenty of them.’

‘Mad nothing!’ she cried enthusiastically. ‘This was once a real flat up here with a kitchen and a toilet and a landing and everything. And there was a proper staircase up to it.’

‘So where did all that go?’

‘It was when they put in the cinema. The auditorium goes right up to the wall of our bedroom. The rest of the flat was removed to make way for it. These two rooms were left over and nobody knew what to do with them. They were quite forgotten till Puttbreese found them. And he put the ladder up from his store-room down there, and because he needs money he wants to rent them.’

‘And why does the flat cost nothing, but also costs forty marks?’

‘Because of course he can’t rent it, the building inspectors wouldn’t allow it because of the fire risk and the danger to life and limb.’

‘I don’t know how you’re going to get up here in a couple of months’ time.’

‘Leave that to me. The main thing is whether you want it.’

‘It’s all right, so far as I can see.’

‘Oh, you nitwit! Nitwit! Nitwit! All right …! We’d be on our own here. No one will stick their nose into our business ever again. It’s marvellous.’

‘Well then, girl, let’s rent it. You’re the one who’s going to do the work, and if you don’t mind the inconvenience it’s all right by me.’

‘It’s all right by me,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Young man,’ said Puttbreese the carpenter, twinkling his small bloodshot eyes at Pinneberg, ‘I’m naturally not taking any
money for that makeshift place. You know what I mean.’

‘Yes,’ said Pinneberg.

‘You know what I mean!’ he repeated, louder.

‘Yes?’ asked Pinneberg, encouragingly.

‘Good God,’ said Lammchen. ‘Just put twenty marks on the table.’

‘That’s right,’ said the master-carpenter. ‘The young lady’s got the message. That’ll be half of November. And don’t you worry about the bulge, young lady. When it gets too big for you to go up the ladder, we’ll put in a hoist with a chair on it, and we’ll pull you up slowly. That’ll be a pleasure for me.’

‘Ah well!’ laughed Lammchen. ‘That’s one worry less.’

‘And when are we moving in?’ asked the master-carpenter.

The couple looked at each other.

‘Today,’ said Pinneberg.

‘Today,’ said Lammchen.

‘But how?’

‘Tell me,’ said Lammchen, turning to Mr Puttbreese. ‘Could you perhaps lend us a hand-cart? And would you perhaps help us push? It’s only two trunks and a dressing-table.’

‘A dressing-table! That’s a good one. I’d have bet on a pram. But you never know what you’re going to come by. Right?’

‘Quite right,’ said Lammchen.

‘Well, all right, you’re on,’ said the master-carpenter. ‘It’ll cost you a beer and a whisky. Well let’s get moving then.’

They got moving with a hand-cart.

Afterwards in the bar it wasn’t easy to make Mr Puttbreese understand that the move had to take place in the greatest secrecy.

‘I see,’ said the master-carpenter finally. ‘You want to do a moonlight flit. That’s none of my business. But I can tell you, you’ve got to lay my money on the table every month in advance, sharp. And if you don’t, never fear I’ll move you for free: out onto the street.’

And his little red eyes blinked, as he laughed a booming laugh.

But then it all went off splendidly. Lammchen packed with pixielike speed, Pinneberg stood at the door holding onto the handle just to be on the safe side, for there were festivities under way again in the dining-room, and the master-carpenter sat on the regal bed and kept repeating in admiration: ‘A golden bed, I must tell my old woman about that. It must be as exciting as being in bed with a virgin.’