Little Man, What Now? (43 page)

Ah, there goes the police-car. So there’d been more trouble with the Communists, or the Nazis. You had to hand it to those fellows for spirit. He’d like to be able to look at a newspaper once in a while, he had no idea what was going on. For all he knew deepest peace might be reigning on German soil; out there in the summer-house you didn’t hear anything.

No, no, if things settled down he would notice. The labour exchange didn’t yet look as though they would have to cut back the staff for want of custom.

Well, you could ruminate all day like that, it wasn’t very amusing and it didn’t cheer Pinneberg up, but what else was there to do in a city where nothing related to you, but concentrate on yourself and your own worries? Shops where you couldn’t buy anything, cinemas you couldn’t go into, cafes for people able to pay,
museums for people who were respectably dressed; homes for other people, public agencies where they cheated you. No, Pinneberg preferred to stay at home minding his own business.

Yet he was happy as he climbed the steps to Heilbutt’s place. It was coming up to six; he hoped that Lammchen was at home now, and that no harm had come to the Shrimp …

He rang the bell.

A girl opened the door. A very nice young girl in an art-silk blouse. She hadn’t been there a month ago. ‘May I help you?’

‘I’d like to see Mr Heilbutt. My name’s Pinneberg.’

And seeing her hesitate he said, irately: ‘I’m a friend of his.’

‘Come in,’ said the young girl, letting him into the hall. ‘Could you wait a minute, please?’

He could. The young girl disappeared behind a white door with an inscription saying ‘Office’.

It was a very respectable hall, with walls covered in red hessian. No sign of nude photos, very respectable pictures, engravings Pinneberg thought, or woodcuts. It was scarcely conceivable that a year and half ago they had been colleagues at Mandels, both selling suits.

And now here was Heilbutt: ‘Good evening, Pinneberg. Nice of you to come round,’ he said. ‘Come in. Marie, bring us some tea in my study!’

So, they weren’t going to go into the office. It transpired that since Pinneberg’s last visit Heilbutt had acquired not only the young girl but also a study, with book shelves and Persian rugs and an enormous desk; precisely the gentleman’s room that Pinneberg had dreamed of all his born days but would never possess.

‘Sit down,’ said Heilbutt. ‘I see you’re looking round. I have bought a few bits of furniture. One has to. Personally I don’t care about such things, you remember at old Mrs Witt’s …’

‘But this here is something,’ said Pinneberg, full of admiration. ‘I think it’s fabulous. All these books …’

‘Ah, well, the books …’ began Heilbutt, but then changed the subject. ‘Well, are you getting on all right out there?’

‘Yes, very much so. We’re very content, Heilbutt. My wife has found a bit of work, darning and mending, that sort of thing. Things are better now.’

‘Well that’s good,’ said Heilbutt. ‘Put it all down there, Marie, I’ll see to it. That’ll be all, thank you.

‘Help yourself, please, Pinneberg. Have a cake. These are supposed to be the right ones for tea. See if you like them. I don’t understand these things and I don’t care.’

Suddenly: ‘Is it getting very cold out there?’

‘No, no,’ said Pinneberg hastily. ‘Not very. The little stove heats very well. The rooms are only small, so it’s cosy most of the time. Here’s the rent.’

‘Oh, right, the rent. Is it time already?’

Heilbutt took the note and folded it, but didn’t put it in his pocket. ‘You tarred the roof, Pinneberg, didn’t you?’

‘Yes indeed. I did. And it was a very good thing you gave me the money to do it. I didn’t realize until I started, but it wasn’t watertight at all. When it started raining this autumn it would have come in in buckets.’

‘Is it watertight now?’

‘Yes, thank heaven, Heilbutt. It won’t let a drop in.’

‘You know,’ said Heilbutt. ‘I ought to tell you something that I read … Do you have heat on all day?’

‘No,’ said Pinneberg hesitantly, not quite sure what Heilbutt was driving at. ‘We have the stove on in the mornings a bit, and then again in the afternoon so that it’s warm in the evening. The weather’s not that cold yet.’

‘And do you know how much briquettes cost out there?’ asked Heilbutt.

‘Not exactly,’ said Pinneberg. ‘Since the last emergency decree they’re supposed to have got cheaper. Perhaps one mark sixty. Or
one mark fifty-five? Really, I don’t know.’

‘I read in a building journal recently,’ said Heilbutt, playing with the note, ‘that you can easily get dry rot in that sort of weekend home. And I’d advise you to heat it properly.’

‘Yes, we can …’ said Pinneberg.

‘That was what I wanted to ask you,’ said Heilbutt. ‘I wouldn’t want the house to deteriorate. If you’d please be kind enough to have the heating on all day, so that the walls dry out thoroughly, I’ll give you this ten mark note back to start with. Then you could perhaps bring me the coal bill as a receipt on the first of next month?’

‘No, no,’ said Pinneberg hurriedly, swallowing hard. ‘You mustn’t, Heilbutt. You’d just be giving me the rent back every time. You’ve helped us enough already, starting at Mandels.’

‘But Pinneberg!’ said Heilbutt, seeming perfectly astonished. ‘Help you—it’s in my own interest to have the roof tarred and the place heated. You can’t call it help. You’re helping yourself.’ And he shook his head as he looked at him.

‘Heilbutt!’ exclaimed Pinneberg. ‘I understand what you’re saying, but …’

‘Oh, now listen to this,’ said Heilbutt. ‘Have I told you who I met from Mandels?’

‘No,’ said Pinneberg. ‘But …?’

‘No? You’ll never guess. I met Lehmann, our former boss and head of Personnel.’

‘And?’ asked Pinneberg. ‘Did you talk to him?’

‘Of course I did, that’s to say he talked to me. He poured out his heart to me.’

‘Why’s that? He’s surely got nothing to complain about.’

‘He got the chop,’ said Heilbutt emphatically. ‘Sacked by Mr Spannfuss. Just like us.’

‘Good grief,’ said Pinneberg, in bewilderment. ‘Lehmann sacked. Heilbutt, you must tell me all about it. If you don’t mind
I’ll help myself to another cigarette.’

PINNEBERG AS THE CAUSE OF THE TROUBLE. THE FORGOTTEN BUTTER AND THE POLICEMAN. NO NIGHT IS DARK ENOUGH

It was getting on for seven when Pinneberg stepped out onto the street again. The conversation with Heilbutt had livened him up and saddened him all at once. So, Lehmann had fallen, the mighty Mr Lehmann who Pinneberg remembered so well sitting grandly behind his shiny desk, and saying, ‘We don’t deal in fertilizers.’

Lehmann had tormented Pinneberg when he was in his power, then along came Spannfuss and did the same to him. And Spannfuss, for all his combat-training, would go the same way. That was the way of the world, and it was small consolation that it happened to everyone in the end.

What had brought about Mr Lehmann’s fall? According to rumour, and if you accepted the official reason, the cause of his dismissal had been that man Pinneberg. Mr Spannfuss, efficient as ever, had sniffed out that the head of Personnel had been exceeding the authority given to him by putting in his own favourites—at a time of staff-cuts! He had claimed that they came from branches in Hamburg, Fulda or Breslau, and Spannfuss had discovered these claims to be false.

In truth everybody knew that had only been the official reason for his dismissal. Favourites were always put in, and now Mr Spannfuss was sowing his own favourites throughout the business. But a precondition for being able to do so in peace was the sacking of Mr Lehmann. What had for twenty years been common knowledge, in the twenty-first filled the cup to overflowing. He’d committed actual forgery, hadn’t he?’

‘Comes from the Breslau branch’, he had written in Pinneberg’s
personnel file, when in fact he had come from Kleinholz’s in Ducherow. Lehmann could in fact be grateful to Mr Spannfuss; criminal prosecution was by no means beyond the bounds of possibility. Now he just had to keep his mouth shut.

But, oh, how he opened his mouth when he encountered his exsalesman Heilbutt! Hadn’t he been friends with that man—stocky little chap, what was his name? Pinneberg. They’d stuck their knife into him too, the poor fool. Because he hadn’t sold enough? That was a joke. After Heilbutt had left, Pinneberg had been the only one in the department who had got anywhere near the quota. No doubt that was why he had particular ‘friends’ among the other salesmen, no doubt that was why there was a letter in his personnel file—anonymous of course—saying that he was a member of a Nazi storm troop!

Lehmann had always thought it was rubbish, otherwise how could Pinneberg be a friend of Heilbutt of all people? But it was useless to argue, Spannfuss only believed his own men, Jänecke and Kessler, apart from which it was widely accepted that Pinneberg was the one who had persistently drawn swastikas and ‘death to the Jews’ on the walls of the employees’ toilets, and a gallows with a fat Jew hanging on it with ‘The New Improved Mandel’ written underneath. It had stopped when Pinneberg left, the loo walls now remaining spotlessly white. And that was the sort of man whom Mr Lehmann had installed on the pretence that he came from Breslau!

Pinneberg had been Lehmann’s downfall, and Kessler had been Pinneberg’s downfall. So much for being a good salesman, and loving the job, putting as much effort into selling a pair of cotton trousers for six and a half marks as an evening suit for a hundred and twenty. Oh yes, there was solidarity among white-collar workers, the solidarity of the envious towards the capable!

He was the man it had all happened to, and he was angry still, but that anger, he sensed as he went along Friedrichstrasse, was
growing old. You could rage about it, but finally what was the point? That was the way things were.

In former days Pinneberg had often strolled along Friedrichstrasse, it was his home ground, and so he noticed that there were many more prostitutes than there used to be. Of course they weren’t all prostitutes, there was a lot of unfair competition these days. He’d heard in the shop a year and a half ago that many unemployed men’s wives walked the streets to earn a few marks.

That was plain to see; many of them were such hopeless cases, utterly charmless, or else if they were pretty they had such greedy faces: greedy for money.

Pinneberg thought of Lammchen and the Shrimp. ‘We aren’t so badly off,’ she was always saying. And she was certainly right.

The police seemed to be still on the alert. There were two at all the places where one usually stood, and you kept meeting pairs of them patrolling the pavements. Pinneberg had nothing against the police in principle. They had to exist of course, especially the traffic police, but he did find that their well-nourished and well-dressed appearance was a provocation, and so was their behaviour. They walked around among the public as his teacher had used to walk among the pupils: you behave properly or else …!

Oh, let them!

This was the fourth time that Pinneberg had strode up and down the stretch of Friedrichstrasse in between the Leipziger and Linden intersections. He couldn’t go back home yet, he simply couldn’t. Once he was home, everything was finished again. At home the ashes of life smouldered hopelessly on, but here something could happen! The prostitutes weren’t giving him a second glance, though. He was out of the question for the ones round here, with his faded coat and his dirty trousers, and his collarless shirt. If he wanted one of their kind he’d have to go down to the Schlesische Station, where the girls didn’t mind how a man looked provided he had money. But did he want a prostitute?

Perhaps. He didn’t know. He didn’t think about it.

What he was sure he wanted was the chance to tell someone what it used to be like, and what nice suits he had had, and how wonderful the Shrimp was.

The Shrimp!

So he had gone and forgotten his butter and bananas after all, and it was nine o’clock, too late for the shops. Pinneberg was furious with himself, and even more sorry than angry. He couldn’t go back without them, what would Lammchen think of him? Perhaps he could still get into one of the shops by the back door. There was a big delicatessen, brilliantly illuminated. Pinneberg pressed his nose flat against the window, perhaps there was someone still there whose attention he could attract by knocking. He had to get his butter and bananas!

A voice beside him said, in a low tone: ‘Move along there!’ Pinneberg started, alarmed, and looked around him. There was a policeman standing beside him.

Was he was speaking to him?

‘Move along, d’you hear!’ shouted the policeman.

There were other people standing by the shop window, well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, but the policeman wasn’t talking to them. There was no doubt that it was Pinneberg he meant.

Pinneberg was thoroughly confused. ‘What? Why? Aren’t I allowed to …?’

He was stammering. He simply didn’t understand.

‘Are you going to go now?’ asked the policeman. ‘Or shall I …?’

He had the strap of his rubber truncheon over his wrist. His grip tightened on it slightly.

Everyone was staring at Pinneberg. More people stopped to look, a regular crowd of spectators. They looked on expectantly, they weren’t taking sides; shop windows had been broken here and in Leipzigerstrasse yesterday.

The policeman had dark eyebrows, keen bright eyes, red
cheeks, a decisive nose and small black moustache.

‘You going to move?’ he asked calmly.

Pinneberg tried to speak; he looked at the policeman, his lips trembled; he looked at the people. They were standing right up to the shop window, well-dressed people, respectable people, people who earned money.

But reflected in the window was another figure: a pale outline without a collar, in a shabby coat, with trousers besmirched with tar.

And suddenly Pinneberg understood everything. Faced with this policeman, these respectable people, this bright shop window, he understood that he was on the outside now, that he didn’t belong here any more, and that it was perfectly correct to chase him away. Down the slippery slope, sunk without trace, utterly destroyed. Order and cleanliness, gone; work, material security, gone; making progress and hope, gone. Poverty is not just misery, poverty is an offence, poverty is a stain, poverty is suspect.