Little Man, What Now? (3 page)

‘Heavens, yes,’ exclaimed Lammchen. ‘Tell me, what kind do you like best: shiny or matt?’

‘Matt!’ he said.

‘Me too, me too!’ she cried. ‘I believe we’ve got the same tastes
in everything. That’s great. What will they cost?’

‘I don’t know. Thirty marks?’

‘As much as that?’

‘Will we have gold ones?’

‘Of course we’ll have gold ones. Let’s take measurements.’

He moved over to her. They took a length of cotton, but it wasn’t easy. Either it cut into them or it was too loose.

‘Looking at hands brings strife,’ said Lammchen.

‘But I’m not looking at them,’ he said. ‘I’m kissing them. I’m kissing your hands, Lammchen.’

A sharp knuckle rapped on the door. ‘Come out. Father is here.’

‘Right away,’ said Lammchen, and slid out of his arms.

‘Quick, let’s tidy ourselves. Father’s always quick to make remarks.’

‘What’s he like, then?’

‘Oh God, you’ll see soon enough. It’s neither here nor there anyhow. It’s me you’re marrying. Father and Mother don’t come into it.’

‘The Shrimp comes into it.’

‘Oh yes, the Shrimp. Nice sensible parents he’s going to have. Can’t even sit properly for a quarter of an hour …’ At the kitchen table sat a tall man in grey trousers, grey waistcoat and white singlet, without a jacket or a collar and wearing slippers. A sallow wrinkled face, small sharp eyes behind drooping spectacles, grey moustache and almost white beard.

He was reading the Social Democratic
Volksstimme
, but when Pinneberg and Emma came in he let it drop and surveyed the young man.

‘So you’re the young fellow that wants to marry my daughter? Pleased to meet you. Sit down. You’ll soon change your tune.’

‘What?’ asked Pinneberg.

Lammchen had put on an apron to help her mother. Mrs
Morschel said crossly: ‘Where’s that boy got to again? The potato-cakes are getting hard.’

‘Overtime,’ said Mr Morschel laconically. And then, winking at Pinneberg: ‘You do overtime too, sometimes, I suppose?’

‘Yes,’ said Pinneberg. ‘Quite often.’

‘But without pay …’

‘I’m afraid so. The boss says …’

Mr Morschel wasn’t interested in what the boss said. ‘There, you see, that’s why I’d prefer a working man for my daughter. When my Karl does overtime he gets paid for it.’

‘Mr Kleinholz says …’ began Pinneberg again.

‘What the employers say, young man—we’ve heard it all before,’ declared Mr Morschel. ‘And we’re not interested. All we’re interested in is what they do. There must be a wage agreement in your place, eh?’

‘I believe so,’ said Pinneberg.

‘Believe! Belief’s a question of religion, and a working man has no truck with that. I’m sure you have a wage agreement. And it says that overtime has to be paid. How come I end up with a son-in-law who isn’t paid overtime?’

Pinneberg shrugged his shoulders.

‘Because you’re not organized, you white-collar workers,’ explained Mr Morschel. ‘Because you don’t stick together; you’ve got no solidarity. So they can push you around just as they like.’

‘I’m organized,’ said Pinneberg resentfully. ‘I’m in a union.’

‘Emma! Mother! Our young man is in a union? Who would have thought it! So natty and in a union.’ Morschel senior turned his head to one side, and surveyed his future son-in-law with half-closed eyes. ‘And what’s your union called, my lad? Out with it!’

‘Clerical, Office and Professional Employees Association of Germany,’ said Pinneberg, getting crosser and crosser.

At this Mr Morschel almost doubled up with laughter.

‘The
COPEA
! Mother, Emma, hold me up! Our young man’s a
boss’s lap-dog. Call that a union? Doesn’t know which side it’s on. The bosses have got it in their pocket. God, what a joke.’

‘Hold on, just a minute’ cried Pinneberg furiously. ‘We’re not lap-dogs. We’re not financed by the bosses. We pay our own dues.’

‘Oh yes, and to whom? A bunch of stooges. Oh Emma, you picked a right one there. The
COPEA
! What a lap-dog!’

Pinneberg looked over at Lammchen for support, but Lammchen wasn’t looking his way. Perhaps she was used it, but that didn’t make it any less of an ordeal for him.

‘I hear you white-collar workers think you’re a cut above us working men.’

‘That’s not what I think.’

‘Oh yes, you do. And why? Because you give your boss not just a week but a whole month’s grace before he has to pay you. Because you do unpaid overtime, because you take less than the agreed wage, because you never strike, because you’re always the blacklegs.’

‘It’s not just to do with money,’ said Pinneberg. ‘We think differently from most working men. We have different needs …’

‘You think differently! You don’t. You think just like a proletarian.’

‘I don’t believe it’s so,’ said Pinneberg. ‘Take me, for example.…’

‘Yes, take you for example,’ said Morschel, with a mean smirk on his face. ‘You helped yourself to an advance, didn’t you?’

‘What d’you mean?’ asked Pinneberg, confused. ‘An advance?’

‘Yes, on Emma.’ The man’s smirk widened. ‘Not very nice, sir. And a very proletarian habit.’

‘I …’ began Pinneberg, growing very red. He wished he could slam the doors and roar: ‘Oh, go to hell all of you …!’

But Mrs Morschel said sharply: ‘Now you be quiet, Father, and stop baiting people. That’s all settled. It’s none of your business.’

‘Here comes Karl,’ called Lammchen, as the door banged
outside.

‘Well let’s have the food, woman,’ said Morschel. ‘And I am right, son-in-law, you ask your pastor. It’s not nice.’

A young man came in, but young only in years; in appearance he was totally un-young; even more sallow and distempered than the old man. He growled ‘Evening’, and taking no notice at all of the guest proceeded to take off jacket and waistcoat, then his shirt. Pinneberg watched with growing amazement.

‘Been doing overtime?’ asked the old man.

Karl Morschel growled something inaudible.

‘Leave off cleaning up for now, Karl,’ said Mrs Morschel. ‘Come and eat.’

But Karl had the tap already running, and had begun washing himself very thoroughly. He was naked from the hips up. Pinneberg felt a little embarrassed on account of Lammchen. But she didn’t seem to mind; that was the way things were, to her.

It wasn’t the way things were to Pinneberg: the ugly earthenware plates, all chipped and stained, the half-cold potato cakes which tasted of onions, the pickled gherkins, the lukewarm bottled beer, which was only put out for the men; and on top of all that this miserable kitchen, and Karl, washing …

Karl sat down at the table and said disagreeably, ‘I need a beer.’

‘This is Emma’s fiancé,’ explained Mrs Morschel. ‘They’re getting married soon.’

‘Oh, so she’s landed one after all,’ said Karl. ‘A bourgeois, I see. A proletarian isn’t good enough for her.’

‘See what I mean,’ said father Morschel, highly satisfied.

‘You’d better pay your keep before you open your mouth here,’ declared Mrs Morschel.

‘I don’t see what you mean,’ said Karl sourly to his father. ‘I’d rather have a real bourgeois than you social fascists.’

‘Social fascists!’ retorted the old man angrily. ‘I’d like to know
who’s the fascist here, you Soviet slave.’

‘Oh, so we’re the slaves? What happened to the Social Democrats’ promise to build bonny babies, not battle-cruisers, then?’

Pinneberg listened with a certain satisfaction. What the old man had been handing out to him he was now getting back from his son with interest. But it didn’t improve the taste of the potato-cakes; it wasn’t a nice dinner; he had imagined his engagement party quite differently.

A NIGHT-TIME CHAT ABOUT LOVE AND MONEY

Pinneberg had let his train go without him; he could get one at four in the morning and still be at work in time.

The couple were sitting in the dark kitchen. Mr Morschel was asleep in one room, Mrs Morschel in the other. Karl had gone to a Communist Party meeting.

They had drawn two kitchen chairs up to each other and were sitting with their backs to the cold stove. The door to the little kitchen balcony was open and the wind was gently moving the thin curtain over the door. Outside, above the hot courtyard full of the din of radios, was the night sky, dark, with very pale stars.

‘What I would like,’ said Pinneberg softly, squeezing Lammchen’s hand, ‘would be to have somewhere nice. I mean,’ he tried to describe it, ‘somewhere bright, with white curtains, and as clean as clean.’

‘I know,’ said Lammchen. ‘It must be awful for you in our house, not being used to it.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that, Lammchen.’

‘Yes you did. And why shouldn’t you say so? It
is
awful. Karl and Father always rowing, Father and Mother always quarrelling, Karl and Father always trying to diddle her over the housekeeping money, Mother short-changing them over the meals. It’s awful,
awful.’

‘But why are they like that? There are three people earning in your home; things ought to be quite easy.’

Lammchen didn’t answer him. ‘I simply don’t belong here,’ she carried on. ‘I’ve always been the Cinderella. When Father and Karl come home, their day’s work is done. I have to start in on the washing up and ironing and sewing and darning socks. Oh, but it’s not really that!’ she cried aloud. ‘I wouldn’t mind that. It’s being taken for granted, being pushed around and never getting a kind word, and Karl behaving as though he was keeping me because he pays more for his board and lodging than me … But I don’t earn as much as him … What sort of money can you get as a shopgirl these days?’

‘It will be over soon,’ said Pinneberg. ‘Very soon.’

‘It’s not really that either,’ she cried desperately. ‘Not really. You see, Sonny, they’ve always despised me, “Dummy” they call me. Of course I’m not that clever. There’s lots of things I don’t understand. And then, not being pretty …’

‘But you are pretty!’

‘You’re the first one who ever said so. If we ever went to a dance, I was always a wallflower. And if Mother told Karl to send his friends over, he would say, “Who’d want to dance with a nanny-goat like her?” You really are the first …’

A feeling he didn’t quite like came over Pinneberg. ‘She really oughtn’t to be telling me this,’ he thought. ‘I’d always thought she was pretty. Perhaps she isn’t pretty after all.’

But Lammchen talked on: ‘Dear Sonny, I don’t want to moan to you. I just wanted to tell you this one time, so that you know I don’t belong here, I belong to you. Only to you. And I’m so so grateful to you, not just because of the Shrimp, but because you’ve come and rescued Cinderella …’

‘Oh, you’re so …’

‘Let me finish. And when you say we want our place to be
bright and clean, you’ll have to be a bit patient: I’ve never learned to cook properly. And if I do anything wrong, you’ll have to tell me, and I’ll never lie to you …’

‘Now, now, Lammchen, that’s enough.’

‘And we’ll never, never, quarrel. Ah God, Sonny, how happy we’re going to be, just the two of us. And then there’ll be three, with our little Shrimp.’

‘What if it’s a girl?’

‘This Shrimp’s going to be a boy, I tell you. A lovely little boy.’

After a while they stood up and stepped out onto the balcony. Yes, the sky was there over the roofs and the stars. They stood a while in silence, their hands on each other’s shoulders.

Then they came down to earth, and the cramped yard with its many lighted window-squares, and the squawking jazz.

‘Shall we get a radio?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Yes, of course. That way I’ll not be so lonely when you’re at work. But not to start off with. There’s such a dreadful lot we have to get first!’

‘Yes,’ he said.

Silence.

‘Sonny,’ began Lammchen quietly. ‘I’ve got to ask you something.’

‘Yes?’ he said, uneasily.

‘But don’t be cross!

‘No,’ he said.

‘Have you any savings?’

There was a pause.

‘A bit,’ he said, hesitantly. ‘What about you?’

‘I’ve got a bit too,’ and then, very quickly, ‘But only a very, very little bit.’

‘Tell me,’ he said.

‘No, you tell me first,’ she said.

‘I …’ he began, then broke off.

‘Oh, please tell me!’ she begged.

‘It’s really very little. Perhaps even less than you.’

‘It can’t be.’

‘Oh, yes, it can.’

There was a pause. A very long pause.

‘Ask me,’ he begged.

‘Right,’ she said, and took a deep breath. ‘Is it more than …’

She paused.

‘Than what?’ he asked.

‘Oh heavens,’ she laughed suddenly, ‘why ever should I be embarrassed! I’ve got a hundred and thirty marks in my savings account.’

He said slowly and proudly: ‘Four hundred and seventy.’

‘That’s great!’ said Lammchen. ‘That makes a round six hundred marks. Sonny, what a pile of money!’

‘I dunno …’ he said ‘It doesn’t seem a lot to me. But living as a bachelor’s very expensive.’

‘And I had to give up seventy marks out of the hundred and twenty I’m paid, for board and lodging.’

‘It takes a long time to save up that amount,’ he said.

‘An awful long time,’ she said. ‘It takes ages to grow.’

There was a pause.

‘I don’t believe we’ll be able to get a flat in Ducherow straight away,’ he said.

‘Then we’ll have to get a furnished room.’

‘That way, we’ll be able to save more for our furniture.’

‘But I believe it’s terribly expensive to rent furnished.’

‘Let’s work it out,’ he suggested.

‘Yes, let’s see how we’ll get by. And let’s reckon as if we had nothing in the bank.’

‘Oh yes, we mustn’t break into that. That’s got to grow. So, one hundred and eighty marks wages …’

‘You’ll get more as a married man.’

‘Ah, I’m not so sure about that.’ He had got very embarrassed. ‘It’s probably in the wage agreement, but my boss is so funny …’

‘I wouldn’t let it bother me whether he was funny or not.’

‘Lammchen, let’s reckon with a hundred and eighty to start with. If it’s more so much the better, but let’s work with what we’re sure of.’