Little Man, What Now? (8 page)

But that kind of business has one snag: it has to be watered with alcohol; it is by nature a thirsty business. An alcoholic business. Every cartload of potatoes, every consignment note, every settlement calls for beer, whisky, brandy. That doesn’t matter if there’s a kindly wife, a household that hangs together and is comfortable to be in, but it does matter if the wife nags.

Mrs Emilie Kleinholz had always nagged. She knew it was a mistake, but Emilie was jealous. She had married a handsome man, a prosperous man; when she was Miss Nobody with next to nothing, she had wrested him away from all the others. Now she bared her teeth over him; after thirty-four years of marriage she was still fighting for him as she did on the first day.

She slopped along in her slippers and dressing-gown to the corner, to Bruhn’s. Her husband was not there. She could have asked politely whether he had been there, but that wasn’t in her nature; she heaped reproaches on the barman: they were scoundrels to give drink to drunkards; she was going to lodge a complaint, it was incitement to drunkenness.

Old man Bruhn himself, with his big beard, led her out of the bar; she danced a jig with fury beside the huge man, but his was a firm and steady grip.

‘There we are, young lady,’ he said.

And there she was, outside. It was a typical small-town market place, with cobblestones, two-storied houses, some gabled, some flat-fronted, but all with curtains closed and all dark. Only the gas-lamps flickered as they swung. Should she go home now? What a fool that would make her look! Emil would mock her for days afterwards if she had gone out to look for him and not found him. She’d have to find him now. However good the booze was, and however drunken the company, she’d drag him away. However much fun he was having.

Fun! Suddenly she knew: there’s dancing at the Tivoli this evening; that’s where Emil will be.

That’s where he is! There!

And just as she was, in her slippers and dressing-gown, she walked half-way across town and into the Tivoli. The treasurer of the Harmony Club wanted a mark entrance fee, but she only replied: ‘Do you want a slap?’

The treasurer did not pursue it.

She stood in the dance-hall, a little constrained at first, looking around from behind a pillar, then exploding into rage. For there was her still handsome Emil, with his large golden beard, dancing with a little dark creature whom she didn’t even know, if you could call that dancing, more like a drunken stagger. The master of ceremonies said: ‘Madam! Please, Madam!’

Then he realized that this was a force of nature, a tornado, a volcanic eruption, against which human beings were powerless. And he stepped back. A path cleared through the dancing couples; she advanced between the walls of people towards the unsuspecting pair, as they stumbled and fumbled round the floor, the only couple who weren’t in the know.

First came a rapid blow. He cried out ‘Oh my sweetie!’ without yet realizing. Then he realized …

She knew it was time to leave with dignity, with reserve. She gave him her arm: ‘It’s time, Emil. Come now.’

And he went with her. He trotted, humiliated, on her arm out of the hall; as undignified as a large dog who has just been beaten, he glanced back one more time at his nice little, gentle little dark girl, who worked in the frame factory in Stossel, who hadn’t had much happiness in her life, and had been exceedingly pleased with her generous and dashing dancing-partner. He went away; she went away. And outside a car had suddenly appeared; the management of the Harmony Club knew enough to realize that on these occasions the best thing is to phone for a car as quickly as possible.

Emil Kleinholz fell asleep on the journey and he didn’t wake
up when his wife and the driver carried him indoors and put him to bed, in the hated marriage bed he had abandoned so full of the spirit of adventure exactly two hours before. He slept. And his wife put out the light and lay for a while in darkness, and then she put the light on again, and contemplated her husband, her handsome, dissipated, golden-blond husband. And she saw, through the livid bloated face, the face of long ago when he was courting her, always up to so many tricks, so full of fun and cheek, forever ready to make a grab at her breasts, but just as ready to have his ears boxed for it.

And in so far as her foolish little brain could think, she thought of the road from there to here: two children, a plain daughter and a bad-tempered ugly son. A business half in ruins, a husband gone to seed, and her? What about her?

Well, in the end all you can do is cry, which can be done in the dark, and that at least, when so much is going downhill, saves money on light. And then she thought of how much he must have squandered—yet again—in those two hours, and she put on the light and searched in his wallet and counted and reckoned. And once again in the darkness she resolved to be nice to him from now on, and she groaned, self-pitying: ‘But it won’t help. I’ll just have to keep him on an even shorter lead!’

And then she cried again, and finally she went to sleep, as we always do finally go to sleep, after a toothache or childbirth, after a blazing row or after one of life’s rare great joys.

Then came the first awakening at five o’clock, to quickly give the stableman the key to the oats bin; and then the second at six, when the girl knocked for the key to the larder. One more hour of sleep! One more hour of rest! And then the third, final awakening at quarter to seven, when the boy had to go to school. Her husband was still asleep. When she looked into the bedroom again at quarter to eight, he was awake and feeling sick.

‘Serve you right for boozing,’ she said and went away again.
Then he came to the table for coffee, sombre, speechless, devastated. ‘A herring, Marie,’ was all he said.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Father,’ said Marie tartly, before fetching the herring. ‘Carrying on like that.’

‘God damn it!’ he roared. ‘It’s time that girl was out of this house!’ he roared again.

‘You’re quite right, Father,’ his wife soothed him. ‘What else are you feeding those three hungry mouths for?’

‘Pinneberg’s the best. He’s the one,’ said the man of the house.

‘Of course. Just put the screws on him.’

‘Leave it to me,’ he said.

And then this man, upon whom Pinneberg depended for his daily bread, went over to his office, carrying in his hands the fate of Pinneberg, Lammchen and the as-yet-unborn Shrimp.

THE HARASSMENT BEGINS. THE NAZI LAUTERBACH, THE DEMON SCHULZ AND THE HUSBAND-IN-SECRET ARE ALL IN TROUBLE

Lauterbach was the first of the employees to arrive at the office, at five to eight. It wasn’t out of a sense of duty, however, but out of boredom. This short, fat, flaxen-haired stump of a man with enormous hands had once been a farm bailiff, but, not liking the country, he had moved to town, to Emil Kleinholz’s in Ducherow. There he had become a sort of expert in seeds and fertilizers. The farmers were not overjoyed to see him get into the cart when they were delivering potatoes; he saw at once if the load wasn’t as specified, if white Silesians had been mixed in with the yellow Industrials. But he had his good side. Admittedly he never allowed himself to be bribed with brandy—he never drank brandy, because he had to protect the Aryan race from such decadent stimulants—so he never raised a glass and never took cigars. With a cry of ‘You old
crook’ he would deal the farmers a cracking slap on the back and beat them down ten, fifteen, twenty per cent. But, and this was enough to placate them, he wore the swastika, he told them the best jokes about the Jews, he described the SA’s latest recruitment drives in Buhrkow and Lensahn, in short he was a real German, trustworthy, and the sworn enemy of Jews, wogs, reparations, Social Democrats and Commies. And that made up for everything.

Lauterbach had only joined the Nazis out of boredom. It had turned out that Ducherow offered as little distraction as the country. He wasn’t interested in girls, and since the cinema did not start until eight and church was over by eleven there was a long gap between the two.

The Nazis were not boring. He quickly joined the action, revealing himself as a young man with an unusually intelligent grasp of fighting, who used his hands (and whatever was in them) with an effectiveness that amounted almost to artistry. Lauterbach’s lust for life was finally satisfied: almost every Sunday, and on occasional weekday evenings too, he was able to have a fight.

Lauterbach’s home was the office. There he had colleagues, the boss, the boss’s wife, workers, farmers: he could tell them all what had happened and what was going to happen. His talk spouted a continuous slow slush on the just and the unjust, enlivened by booms of laughter when he described how he had dealt with the friends of the USSR.

There wasn’t anything of that nature to report today; however a new General Order had arrived for every SA squad leader—known to his troops as the ‘Gruf’—the contents of which were now handed on to Pinneberg, who appeared punctually at eight. SA members now had new insignia! ‘I think it’s a stroke of genius! Up till now we’ve only had our troop numbers. You know, Pinneberg, arabic numerals embroidered on the right collar-tab. Now we’ve got two-colour braid on the collar. It’s a stroke of genius. Now you can always tell even from behind what troop any SA man belongs
to. Think of what it means in practice. Say we’re in a fight, and somebody’s working a man over, and I look at the collar …’

‘Amazing,’ agreed Pinneberg, sorting out delivery notes from Saturday. ‘Was Munich 387 536 a load from several places?’

‘The wagon of wheat? Yes. And just think, our Gruf now has a star on his left collar-tab.’

‘What’s a Gruf?’ asked Pinneberg.

Schulz came, the third hungry mouth, at ten past eight. Schulz came and at a stroke all Nazi insignia and delivery notes for wheat were forgotten. The demon Schulz had arrived, the inspired but unreliable Schulz, Schulz who could reckon up 285.63 hundredweight at 3.85 marks in his head quicker than Pinneberg could do it on paper, but who was a womanizer, an unscrupulous lecher, a philanderer, the only man talented enough to snatch a kiss in passing from Mariechen Kleinholz and not be married off to her on the spot.

Schulz came, he of the black pomaded curls, the sallow lined face and the big black sparkling eyes; Schulz the dandy of Ducherow, with his ironed-in creases and his black hat (fifty centimetres in diameter); Schulz with his beringed and nicotine-stained fingers; Schulz, king of hearts to all the servant girls, idol of the shop assistants, who waited for him after work in the evening and quarrelled over him at dances.

Schulz came.

Schulz said ‘Mornin’, carefully hung up his coat on a hanger, looked at his colleagues, first inquiringly, then pityingly, then contemptuously, and said, ‘You haven’t heard the news, of course?’

‘You got off with some girl yesterday, as usual, so who was it?’ asked Lauterbach.

‘You don’t know anything about anything. You sit here totting up delivery notes, doing the current account book while …’

‘While what?’

‘Emil … Emil and Emilie … yesterday evening at the Tivoli …’

‘Did he take her with him? Wonders never cease!’

Schulz sat down.

‘It’s high time we got the clover samples out. Who’ll do that, you or Lauterbach?’

‘You.’

‘I don’t do the clover. That’s our dear agricultural expert’s business. The boss was shaking a leg with Frieda, that little dark-haired girl from the frame factory, I was two steps away, and the old lady pounced on him. Emilie in her dressing-gown, and probably nothing but her nightie on underneath …’

‘In the Tivoli?’

‘You must be kidding, Schulz!’

‘As true as I’m sitting here. The Harmony Club were holding a family dance at the Tivoli. With a military band from Platz, very smart. The German army in their best. And suddenly our Emilie jumps on her Emil, biffs him one: ‘You old boozer, you filthy pig …’

What price delivery notes, what price the day’s work now? There’s a sensation in the Kleinholz office.

Lauterbach begged: ‘Tell us again, Schulz. Mrs Kleinholz comes into the ballroom … I can’t imagine it … which door did she come in by then? When did you first see her?’

Schulz was flattered. ‘What is there to add? You know it already. So she comes in, straight through the door from the lobby, bright red, you know the way she goes: bluish-purply-red … So she comes in …’

Emil Kleinholz entered. Into the office. The three started, sat on their chairs, rustled papers. Kleinholz stared at them, stood in front of them, gazing down at their bent heads.

‘Nothing to do?’ he rasped. ‘Nothing to do? I’ll lay one of you off. Now then, which one?’

The three did not look up.

‘Rationalize. Have two working hard instead of three lazing around. What about you, Pinneberg? You’re the youngest.’

Pinneberg did not reply.

‘Of course you’ve all lost your tongues … It was a different story a few minutes ago. So what did my old lady look like, you old goat? Bluish-purply-red? Shall I throw you out? Shall I chuck you out on the spot?’

‘The bastard was listening,’ thought the three, turning inwardly pale with fright. ‘Oh God, Oh God, what did I say?’

‘We weren’t talking about you at all, Mr Kleinholz,’ said Schulz in a low tone, almost to himself.

‘Well, and what about you?’ Kleinholz turned to Lauterbach. But Lauterbach was not frightened like his two colleagues. Lauterbach was one of those rare employees who couldn’t care less whether they had a job or not. ‘Afraid? What have I got to be afraid of?’ was doubtless what he said to himself. ‘With these fists? I can do any job. I can be a groom or carry sacks. Book-keeper? I’m not dazzled by a title like that.’

So Lauterbach looked fearlessly into his boss’s bloodshot eyes. ‘Yes, Mr Kleinholz?’

Kleinholz dealt the counter-rail a reverberating blow. ‘I’m laying off one of you band of brothers. You’ll see … And the others needn’t feel safe either—plenty more where you came from. You go to the foodstore, Lauterbach, and you and Kruse can put a hundred hundredweights of peanut-cake meal into sacks. Rufisque brand. No, wait, Schulz can go, he looks like death again today, it will do him good to lift some sacks.’