Little Man, What Now? (29 page)

Oh God, how long it all takes! His heart began hammering again. Perhaps I shall never see her again.

The nurse said: ‘One moment please. I’ll find out. Who’s calling? Pallenberg?’

‘No, Pinneberg, nurse, Pinneberg.’

‘Pallenberg, that’s what I said. One moment please.’

‘Nurse, Pinne …’

But she’d already gone. And perhaps there was a Mrs Pallenberg in the maternity ward, and he might be given the wrong information, and think it had all gone off well when in reality …

‘Are you still there, Mr Pinneberg?’

Thank heaven, a different nurse. Perhaps the one who was looking after Lammchen.

‘No, it’s not time yet. It could last another three or four hours. Perhaps you could call again around midnight?’

‘Is it going all right? Is everything as it should be?’

‘Yes, completely normal. Ring us again at midnight, Mr Pinneberg.’

He hung up. Now he had to go out again. Heilbutt was waiting for him in cubicle thirty-seven. How ever had he been mad enough to come here?

Pinneberg knocked at thirty-seven, and Heilbutt called, ‘Come in’. They were sitting side by side on the little bench, and appeared really only to have been chatting; perhaps it was all in his mind, perhaps he, like Mrs Witt, was too corrupted for these things.

‘So let’s go,’ said the naked Heilbutt, stretching. ‘It’s cramped in here. You’ve got me really warmed up, Emma.’

‘And you me!’ laughed Miss Coutureau.

Pinneberg followed behind them, and once again decided that it was purely and simply embarrassing.

‘What news of your wife?’ called Heilbutt over his shoulder, then explained to his companion: ‘Mrs Pinneberg is in the hospital. She’s due to have a baby tonight.’

‘Oh!’ said Miss Coutureau.

‘It’s not time yet,’ said Pinneberg. ‘It could last another three or four hours.’

‘That will give you the chance to see everything,’ said Heilbutt, highly satisfied.

Actually, it gave Pinneberg the chance to get thoroughly cross with Heilbutt.

They entered the swimming area. ‘Not many here’ was his first impression. But then he realized there were actually lots of them. A whole crowd were gathered on the diving-boards, all incredibly naked, and one by one they stepped forward and executed a leap
off the board and into the pool.

‘I think it would be best if you stayed here,’ said Heilbutt, ‘and if you want to know anything, you need only wave to me.’

And with that the two went off, leaving Pinneberg perfectly safe and unmolested in his corner. He watched what was happening on the diving-board. Heilbutt appeared to be something of a leading light, everyone greeted him, smiled and beamed at him; the shouts of ‘Joachim!’ reached as far as Pinneberg.

True, there were some tall, good-looking young men among them, and some very young girls, with firm sturdy bodies, but they were very much in the minority. The main contingent were dignified older gentlemen and stout women. Pinneberg could very well imagine them listening to a military band and drinking coffee; in this place they looked utterly incongruous.

‘Excuse me,’ said a whispering, very polite voice behind him. ‘Are you a guest too?’

Pinneberg started and looked round. A very stocky lady was standing behind him, mercifully with all her clothes on, hornrimmed glasses balancing on her hooked nose.

‘Yes, I’m a guest,’ he said.

‘So am I,’ said the lady, and introduced herself: ‘My name is Nothnagel.’

‘Pinneberg,’ said he.

‘Very interesting, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘So unusual.’

‘Very interesting,’ confirmed Pinneberg.

‘Were you introduced by a …’ she paused, and then asked, terribly discreetly, … ‘by a girlfriend?’

‘No, a man friend.’

‘Oh, a man. I was introduced by a man friend too. And may I ask whether you’ve decided yet?’ asked the lady.

‘About what?’

‘About joining? Whether you want to become a member?’

‘No, I haven’t decided.’

‘Neither have I. This is the third time I’ve been, would you believe it? and I haven’t been able to decide. At my age, it isn’t so simple.’

She gave him a timid, questioning glance. Pinneberg said: ‘It isn’t at all easy.’

She was pleased. ‘There you are, that’s just what I keep saying to Max. Max is my friend. There he is, no, now you can’t see him any more …’

But he could see Max, who turned out to be a good-looking forty-year old, tanned, upstanding and dark-haired, the very model of a go-getting businessman.

‘Yes, I keep saying to Max, it’s not as easy as you think, not at all, above all not for a woman.’ She again looked appealingly at Pinneberg, so that he felt obliged to say: ‘Yes, it’s terribly difficult.’

‘You see! Max is always saying: look at it from the business angle, it’ll be an advantage to you to join. He’s right it’s benefited his business a great deal already, being a member.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Pinneberg politely, genuinely curious.

‘Well, I can’t see any reason why I shouldn’t talk to you about it. Max has a carpet and curtain agency. Now business is getting worse and worse, and so he joined up here. Wherever he hears there’s a big club, he joins it, and sells to the other members. Of course he gives them a respectable discount, and he says there’s still enough left for him. But it’s easy for Max: he’s so good-looking and knows such good jokes and is such good company always. For me it’s much more difficult.’

She sighed deeply.

‘Are you in business too?’ asked Pinneberg, looking at the poor, foolish, grey creature.

‘Yes,’ she said, looking confidentially up at him. ‘I’m in business too, but I don’t have much luck. I had a chocolate shop, it was a good business in a good situation, but I didn’t have the gift for it. I had bad luck all the time. I wanted to make it look really
nice once upon a time, so I got a window-dresser, fifteen marks I paid him, and he did the window for me. There were two hundred marks’ worth of goods in there. I was so busy and hopeful, I thought it was bound to work, and in my enthusiasm I forgot to pull down the blinds, and the sun—it was summer—shone into the shop window. And well, I really don’t know how to tell you, by the time I noticed it, all the goods had melted and run into each other. All spoiled. I sold them for ten pfennigs a pound to children. Imagine that, the most expensive chocolates, ten pfennigs a pound. What a waste!’ She looked mournfully at Pinneberg, who was moved by the sad, yet ridiculous tale, and had quite forgotten about the goings-on in the baths.

‘Didn’t you have anyone who could have helped you a bit?’ he asked.

‘No, nobody. Max came later. He got me an agency in trusses, girdles and bras. It ought to have been a very good agency, but I don’t sell anything. Hardly anything.’

‘Well, that sort of business is difficult today,’ said Pinneberg.

‘Isn’t it!’ she agreed gratefully. ‘I run about all day, upstairs and downstairs, and sometimes I don’t even sell five marks’ worth. ‘Now,’ and she tried to smile, ‘that isn’t so bad. People really don’t have the money. But if only some of them weren’t so nasty! You see,’ she said warily, ‘I’m Jewish. Have you noticed?’

‘No … not particularly,’ said Pinneberg, awkwardly …

‘You see!’ she said. ‘People do notice. That’s what I’m always saying to Max, they do notice. And I just wish that anti-semites would have a notice on their door, so that one doesn’t need to bother them in the first place. It always comes like a bolt from the blue. “Take your indecent stuff out of here, you filthy old Jewess”, someone said to me yesterday.’

‘What a swine!’ said Pinneberg, incensed.

‘I have sometimes thought of leaving the Jewish faith, I’m not really practising, I eat pork and everything. But I don’t feel I can do
that now, when everyone has it in for the Jews.’

‘You’re right there!’ agreed Pinneberg. ‘I shouldn’t do that.’

‘So Max thought I ought to join up here, and I’d be able to sell a lot. He’s right, too, you can see that most of the women—I’m not talking about the young girls—could do with a girdle or a bra. I know exactly what every woman here needs, I’ve been standing here three evenings running. Max keeps on saying: “Make up your mind, Elsa. It’s money for jam.” And yet I can’t. Can you understand that?’

‘Oh, I understand. I’m not going to decide either.’

‘So you mean I shouldn’t do it, in spite of the business opportunity?’

‘It’s difficult for me to say,’ said Pinneberg, looking thoughtfully at her. ‘You must know how necessary it is, and whether it’s really worth it.’

‘Max would be very cross if I said no. He’s been so impatient with me lately, I’m afraid …’

But Pinneberg was suddenly alarmed in case she was going to unburden that chapter of her life onto him as well. She was a sad little grey creature to be sure, and it was far from clear what she could do with her life: in fact, as she talked he had found himself hoping desperately that he would not die soon and leave Lammchen in just such an agonizing plight. But he was quite sad enough already, and he suddenly cut her short quite rudely by saying: ‘I’ve got to make a telephone call. Excuse me!’

And she said very politely: ‘Oh please do, I didn’t want to detain you.’

And Pinneberg went.

PINNEBERG IS TREATED TO A BEER, GOES TO STEAL SOME FLOWERS AND ENDS UP LYING TO HIS LAMMCHEN

Pinneberg hadn’t said goodbye to Heilbutt, he didn’t care whether he minded or not. He simply couldn’t listen to any more of that depressed and depressing chat. He fled. He tramped all the long way from the outermost eastern district of Berlin to Alt-Moabit which was in the north-west. He might just as well walk, there was plenty of time till twelve, he could save the fare. Sometimes he thought fleetingly of Lammchen, then of the Nothnagel woman, and then Jänecke, who would soon be head of department, because Mr Kröpelin was not in Mr Spannfuss’s good books, but mostly he thought of nothing. You could just walk, and look in the shops, and the buses drove by, and the illuminated advertisements were so pretty, and once it occurred to him: what was it that Bergmann had said? ‘She’s only a woman. They don’t understand.’ What did he know, he’d never met Lammchen!

So he walked, and when he got to Alt-Moabit, it was eleven-thirty. He looked round to find the cheapest place to phone from, but then just hurried into the nearest pub and ordered a beer. He resolved to drink it very slowly and smoke two cigarettes at the same time. And then to make his phone call. By that time the half an hour till midnight would be over.

But before the beer was even on the table, he had jumped up and rushed into the telephone box. The coin was already in his hand, how it had got there he didn’t know, and he asked for Moabit 8650.

A man’s voice came on first, and Pinneberg asked for the maternity ward. There was a long wait, and a woman’s voice asked: ‘Hello? Is that Mr Pinneberg?’

‘Yes. Nurse, tell me …’

‘Twenty minutes ago. Everything went perfectly smoothly.
Mother and child both doing well. Congratulations.’

‘Oh, that’s wonderful, nurse, thank you, nurse, thank you.’

Suddenly Pinneberg was in high good humour, the nightmare had gone, he was happy. ‘Now tell me, nurse, is it a boy or a girl?’

‘Sorry,’ said the nurse at the other end of the line. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Pinneberg, we’re not allowed to.’

You could have knocked Pinneberg down with a feather. ‘But why not, nurse? I’m the father, you can tell me.’

‘I’m not allowed to, Mr Pinneberg. The mother has to tell the father herself.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Pinneberg, feeling quite abashed by so much forethought.

‘May I come over straight away?’

‘Good heavens, no! The doctor’s with your wife at the moment. Tomorrow morning at eight.’

And with that, after a hasty ‘Goodnight, Mr Pinneberg’, the nurse rang off. Johannes Pinneberg, however, stepped like a man in a dream out of the telephone kiosk, and without any idea where he was, marched right through the pub towards the street, and would have gone on if the waiter had not taken him by the arm and said: ‘Listen here, young man, you haven’t paid for your beer.’

At that Pinneberg woke up and said very politely ‘Oh, please excuse me’, sat down at his table, took a swig from the glass, and seeing the waiter still casting a baleful look at him said, ‘Please excuse me. I’ve just heard on the phone that I’m a father.’

‘Goodness me!’ said the waiter. ‘That’s enough to scare the pants off anybody. Boy or girl?’

‘Boy,’ claimed Pinneberg boldly. He could hardly reveal he didn’t know.

‘It would be,’ said the waiter. ‘They cost the most. You can’t get away from it.’ He looked again at Pinneberg, sitting huddled in his chair and said, still uncomprehending: ‘Well, just to cut the damages a bit, I’ll stand you the beer.’ Then Pinneberg came to himself
and said: ‘Not at all! Not at all!’ laid down a mark and said: ‘It’s fine. It’s just fine!’ and rushed out.

The waiter stared after him, recognition finally dawning: ‘He’s pleased. The dimwit is actually pleased! He’s got a shock coming.’

It was a three minutes’ walk home, but Pinneberg went on past the cinema, past where he lived, deep in thought. He was thinking how he was going to get some flowers before eight in the morning. What do you do, when there’s nowhere to buy flowers, and you have no garden to pick them from? You go out and steal them! And what better place to steal them than the public flower beds of Berlin, to which you, as a citizen, had a certain right?

And so began Pinneberg’s wanderings through the hours of night: to the Grosser Stern, to Lützowplatz, to Nollendorfplatz, to Viktoria-Luise-Platz, to Prager Platz. At each of the squares he stopped and stared thoughtfully at the beds. Though it was already the middle of March not one of them had been planted out yet: quite a scandal really.

Such flowers as there were didn’t add up to much. A few crocuses or a scattering of snowdrops in the grass. Was that fit for Lammchen? Pinneberg was very dissatisfied with the city of Berlin.

He continued his wanderings, through Nikolsburger Platz and on to Hindenburgpark. Then to Fehrbelliner Platz, Olivaer Platz and Savignyplatz. Nothing. Not a flower for this day of days. Finally, however, he raised his eyes from the ground and saw a clump of bushes covered with shining yellow blossom. Sprays as golden as the sun, without a green leaf; nothing but yellow flowers on the bare twigs. He didn’t stop to think. He didn’t even look to see whether anyone was watching. Waking from his dream, he climbed over the iron railing, went over the lawn and picked a whole armful of those golden branches. And he went back over the lawn and the railing, quite unmolested, and walked all the way home with the brilliant sprays in his hand. A kindly star must
have been shining over him in his ecstasy, for he passed dozens of policemen before he climbed the ladder to his little home in Alt-Moabit. Stopping only to thrust the twigs into a can of water, he flung himself into bed with a deep sigh, and fell asleep the moment he lay down.