Little Man, What Now? (28 page)

Pinneberg stood indecisively on the street. The street lights were on already. The UFA cinema was festively bright, everything was going on as usual and would go on, with or without Lammchen, with or without the Pinnebergs. It wasn’t so easy to get that clear in your brain, almost impossible.

Was it possible to go home with such thoughts? The flat was empty, so terribly empty, precisely because everything in it reminded him of Lammchen. There were the two beds, each evening they’d held each other’s hands across the gap between them, that had been lovely. That wasn’t going to happen tonight. Perhaps it would never happen again. But where was he to go?’

Have a drink? No, that wouldn’t do. It cost money, and then he had to call at eleven or twelve, and it would be shameful if he was drunk. It would be shameful to get drunk while Lammchen was going through this ordeal. He wasn’t going to shirk his part of it, he would at least think of Lammchen screaming as she screamed.

But where was he to go? Walk the streets for four hours? He couldn’t do that. He walked past the cinema which had their flat above it, he walked past the end of Spenerstrasse, where his mother lived. No, all that was out of the question.

He walked slowly on. There were the law-courts, and there were the cells. Perhaps there were other tormented souls behind those lightless barred windows. You ought to know about such things; perhaps life would be easier if you did. But you were so terribly ignorant. You went on your way, thinking your own thoughts, horribly alone, and on an evening like this you didn’t know where to go.

Suddenly he knew. He looked at his watch. He would have to go by tram or the street door of the flats would be closed before he got there.

He travelled a stretch on one tram, then changed onto another and went a bit further. Now he was looking forward to his visit, with every kilometre further away from the hospital, Lammchen
and the baby she had to bear receded further into a state of semi-unreality.

No, he was no hero, in any respect, either on the attack or in his self-torturing; he was a totally ordinary young man. He did his duty; he would have considered it a disgrace to get drunk. But a visit to a friend: that was all right, you could even look forward to it. That wasn’t a disgrace.

Chance was on his side: ‘Yes, Mr Heilbutt is at home.’

Heilbutt was eating his dinner, and he would of course not have been Heilbutt if he had been in the least surprised by this late visit. ‘Pinneberg. How nice of you to come. Have you had dinner yet? No, of course you haven’t. It’s not eight yet. Come and have some.’

He asked no questions. Pinneberg was annoyed that he didn’t, but he didn’t.

‘What a good idea of yours to come. Look around. It’s just the usual sort of den, hideous really but I don’t mind. It doesn’t worry me. It’s nothing to do with me.’

He paused.

‘Do you see the nude photos? Yes, I’ve got quite a collection. Thereby hangs a tale. Whenever I move in anywhere, and put the pictures up on the wall, the landlady is always horrified. Some want me to move out on the spot.’

He paused again. He looked around him. ‘Yes, there’s always trouble to start with,’ said Heilbutt. ‘These landladies are mostly incredibly narrow-minded. But then I convince them. One simply has to reflect that in itself nudity is the only decent state. That’s how I convince them.’ Another pause. ‘My landlady here, for example, Mrs Witt. She was in such a state! “Put them in the chest of drawers,” she said, “excite yourself with them as much as you like, but not in front of me …”.’

Heilbutt stared earnestly at Pinneberg: ‘I convinced her. You must realize, Pinneberg, that I’m a born naturist, so I said to Mrs
Witt: “All right, sleep on it, and if tomorrow morning you still want me to take the pictures down, I will. Coffee at seven please.” So at seven o’clock in the morning she knocks at the door with the coffee tray, and I’m standing here, completely naked doing my morning exercises. I say to her: “Mrs Witt, look at me, look closely at me. Does it disturb you? Does it excite you? Natural nakedness is without shame, and you aren’t ashamed either.” She’s convinced. She’s stopped grumbling about them. She thinks I’m right.’

Heilbutt stared into space: ‘People only need to know, Pinneberg; it hasn’t been properly explained to them. You should do it too, Pinneberg, and your wife. It would be good for you both, Pinneberg.’

‘My wife …’ began Pinneberg.

But Heilbutt was unstoppable. Heilbutt, so dark, so reserved, so distinguished, had his hobby-horse like everyone else. ‘Take these nudes for instance. There’s not a collection like it anywhere in Berlin. There are companies that send nude photos by post,’ he curled his lip, ‘dozens of them, but they’re no good, ugly models with ugly bodies. These that you see here were all privately taken. There are ladies here,’ Heilbutt’s voice grew solemn, ‘from the highest society. They subscribe to our principles.’ Raising his voice: ‘We are free people, Pinneberg.’

‘Yes, I should think so,’ replied Pinneberg, embarrassed.

‘Do you imagine,’ whispered Heilbutt, bending very near, ‘that I could stand this eternal selling, and the silly people who work with us, and the odious bosses,’ he gestured towards the window, ‘and all that out there, the nasty mess that Germany’s in, if I didn’t have this? It’d be enough to make you despair, but I know it’s going to be different one day. That helps, Pinneberg. That helps. You ought to try it too, you and your wife.’ But he didn’t wait for an answer. He stood up and called out of the door: ‘Mrs Witt, you can clear away now.’

‘Books,’ said Heilbutt, coming back, ‘sport, theatre, girls,
politics, everything the people at work do; they’re just a drug; they’re not the real thing. The real thing …’

‘But …’ began Pinneberg, but got no further as Mrs Witt came in with a tray.

‘Look who’s here, Mrs Witt,’ said Heilbutt. ‘This is my friend Pinneberg. I want to take him to our meeting this evening.’

Mrs Witt was a small round elderly lady. ‘You do that, Mr Heilbutt,’ she said. ‘It’ll be fun for the young gentleman. You needn’t be nervous,’ she reassured Pinneberg. ‘You don’t have to undress if you don’t want to. I didn’t undress when Mr Heilbutt took me.’

‘I …’ began Pinneberg.

‘It is funny though,’ Mrs Witt told him, ‘when all of them are going around naked and talking to you quite naked, elderly gentlemen with beards and glasses, and you have your clothes on. Very embarrassing it is, too.’

‘You see,’ said Heilbutt. ‘And we aren’t embarrassed.’

‘Well, it must be quite nice for the young gentlemen,’ said plump, elderly Mrs Witt. ‘I don’t quite see what there is in it for the girls, but it must be a good way for the men to pick up a lady-friend. They don’t have to buy a pig in a poke.’

‘That’s your opinion, Mrs Witt,’ said Heilbutt shortly, visibly annoyed. ‘If you could clear away, please.’

‘You don’t like me saying that, Mr Heilbutt,’ pushing the dinner things together,’ but it’s the truth, some of them were going into the cubicles together quite openly.’

‘You don’t understand, Mrs Witt,’ said Heilbutt. ‘Good evening, Mrs Witt.’

‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ said Mrs Witt, going off with her tray, but stopping a moment in the doorway to say: ‘Of course I don’t understand it. But it’s cheaper than going to the pub.’ And with that she was off, leaving Heilbutt staring angrily at the brown varnished door.

‘You can’t blame the woman,’ he said, blaming her deeply. ‘She
doesn’t know any better. Of course, Pinneberg, of course people strike up relationships, but that happens everywhere when young people get together. It has nothing to do with our movement.’ He broke off. ‘You’ll see for yourself. You’ve got time, haven’t you. You’ll come with me?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Pinneberg, embarrassed. ‘I have to make a phone call first. My wife is in hospital.’

‘Oh,’ said Heilbutt sympathetically. Then he realized: ‘Is it happening?’

‘Yes,’ said Pinneberg. ‘I took her in this afternoon. It’ll probably be tonight. And Heilbutt …’ he wanted to say more, about his unhappiness, his fears, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

‘You can telephone from the baths,’ said Heilbutt. ‘You don’t think your wife would have anything against it?’

‘No, I don’t think so. It just seems so strange, when she’s lying there in the maternity ward, the delivery room it’s called, where they give birth, and it seems to be so hard. I heard one of them shrieking, it was awful.’

‘Well, yes, no doubt it hurts,’ said Heilbutt with an outsider’s sang-froid. ‘But it always goes off all right. You’ll both be happy to have it behind you. And, as I said, you don’t have to undress.’

WHAT PINNEBERG THINKS OF NATURISM AND MRS NOTHNAGEL’S FEELINGS ABOUT IT

For an inexperienced man like Pinneberg an invitation like Heilbutt’s was dangerous in all sorts of ways. Not that he had ever been particularly shy in sexual matters, on the contrary. He had grown up in Berlin and, as Mrs Pinneberg had not long ago reminded him, there had been those games with schoolgirls in the sand-pit that had given such offence at the time. And then when you grow up in the clothing business where the jokes and the models are as
free as the supply of clothes, you don’t have many romantic ideas left. Girls are girls, and men are men, and however different they are, they all like to do it. And if they behave as if they don’t, then they have reasons which are actually nothing to do with the matter: they want to get married, or the boss doesn’t like it, or because they’ve got silly ideas of some kind.

So that wasn’t the source of the danger. The source of the danger was precisely that he knew too well what it was all about and had no illusions about it. It was all very well for Heilbutt to say that nothing of the sort ever entered people’s heads. Pinneberg knew better. Something of the sort
did
enter people’s heads.

Pinneberg had only to paint the briefest mental picture of the young girls and women running about and bathing and swimming, and he knew what went on.

But—and this was Pinneberg’s great discovery—he didn’t want to have any sensations in that quarter unless they were connected with Lammchen. He had behind him the usual childhood with all its disenchantments and revelations, and at least a dozen girlfriends, not counting escapades. And then he had met Lammchen, and the joyful and pleasant experience that had happened for the first time in the dunes between Wiek and Lensahn had for a long time stayed just that: something that made life happier.

Then they had got married, and they had often done what comes so easily and naturally in marriage, and it had always been good and pleasant and liberating, just as it had always been, but then again not as it had always been. For out of it a commitment had emerged; whether because Lammchen was such a wonderful woman, or whether from the habit of marriage, but the mysteries and the illusions had returned. And now he was on a pilgrimage to the baths with his friend Heilbutt (whom he admired but now found just a trifle absurd), he knew very clearly that he didn’t want to feel anything that wasn’t connected with Lammchen. He
belonged to her, as she belonged to him, and he did not want any pleasure that had not its origin and fulfilment in her; he just didn’t want it.

It was on the tip of his tongue to say to Heilbutt: ‘You know, Heilbutt, I’d rather go to the hospital. I’m a bit worried.’

Just an excuse, so that he didn’t look too foolish. But then, before he could snatch a pause in Heilbutt’s stream of talk, everything was all mixed up again: his flat, the delivery room, the swimming-pool with naked women, the nude photos, what little pointed breasts some girls had! He used to think that was nice, but since he had known Lammchen’s full, soft bosom … well, it was the same story, wasn’t it, everything that she was was good, so now he was really going to tell Heilbutt …

‘Here we are,’ said Heilbutt.

Pinneberg looked up at the building and said. ‘Oh, it’s a normal baths. I thought …’

‘You thought we had our own. No, we aren’t that rich yet.’

Pinneberg’s heart was beating nineteen to the dozen, he was actually frightened. Nothing frightening presented itself for the moment however. A grey female sat at the ticket office and said: ‘Good evening, Joachim. You’re in thirty-seven.’ And gave him a key with a number.

‘Thank you,’ said Heilbutt. Fancy him being called Joachim, thought Pinneberg.

‘And the gentleman?’ asked the female, motioning her head towards Pinneberg.

‘A guest,’ replied Heilbutt. ‘So you don’t want to swim?’

‘No,’ said Pinneberg, embarrassed. ‘I’d rather not today.’

‘Just as you like,’ said Heilbutt, smiling. ‘Take a look at everything and perhaps you’ll come for a key later.’

And then the two of them went down the corridor between the cubicles, and from the pool, invisible from here, there came the usual laughing and splashing and cries, and there was the
usual tepid watery swimming-pool smell. It was all so normal that Pinneberg was beginning to feel much calmer when a cubicle door open a crack and he saw something rosy and wanted to look away. And then the cubicle door opened and a young female person dressed in nothing at all appeared in the doorway and said: ‘Oh, there you are at last, Achim, I thought you weren’t coming again.’

‘Oh no,’ said Heilbutt. ‘Allow me to introduce my friend Pinneberg. Mr Pinneberg: Miss Emma Coutureau.’

Miss Coutureau inclined her head, and extended her hand to Pinneberg like a princess. And he looked away, looked round, didn’t know where to look.

‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ said Miss Coutureau, who remained stark naked. ‘I’m sure you’ll see we’ve got the right idea.’

But then Pinneberg spied a way out: a telephone booth. ‘I have to make a quick call. Excuse me,’ he murmured, and dashed off.

Heilbutt called after him: ‘We’re in cubicle thirty-seven.’

Pinneberg took a lot of time getting through. Anyway it was much too early to be phoning, it was only nine, but it was better to be out of there for the moment.

‘Maybe you don’t feel any desire?’ he reflected. ‘Perhaps the thing would be to be naked too.’

And then he put in a coin and asked for Moabit 8650.