Little Man, What Now? (12 page)

He surveyed the three triumphantly as they crept shamefacedly to their places. Kleinholz swiftly fired a second volley: ‘Well, my dear Schulz, you look capable of sleeping off your hangover in the office at my expense. A well-watered family funeral was it? So what shall we …?’ He thought. Then he had it. ‘You know what? You can climb up on the trailer behind the truck and go to the wheat mill. And make sure you work the brake properly—it’s an uphill, downhill ride—I’ll tell the driver to keep an eye on you, and give you a clout if you forget to brake.’

Kleinholz laughed. He had made a joke, and so he laughed. Because of course that bit about the clout wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, even if he did mean it. Schulz got up to go.

‘Are you going without the paperwork? Pinneberg, make out the delivery notes for Schulz. The man can’t write today; he’s got the shakes.’

Pinneberg scrawled away, glad to have something to do.

Then he gave Schulz the papers: ‘Here you are, Schulz.’

‘One moment more, Mr Schulz,’ said Emil. ‘You can’t be back before twelve, and I can only fire you up to twelve o’clock according to our contract. You know I’m still not sure which of you three I’m going to fire, I’ll have to see … So I’ll fire you now provisionally, to give you something to think about on the way, and if you work the brakes properly I almost believe you’ll sober up, Schulz!’

Schulz stood and moved his lips soundlessly. He had, as has been observed before, a lined, sallow face, and he hadn’t been looking too good that morning to start with, but now, what an ashen heap of misery he was!

‘Get off now!’ said Kleinholz. ‘And report to me when you come back. Then I’ll tell you whether I’ll withdraw my dismissal or not.’

So Schulz got off. The door closed, and slowly, with a trembling hand, on which the wedding-ring glittered, Pinneberg pushed away his blotting-pad. ‘Will it be my turn next or Lauterbach’s?’

At the first word he saw it was going to be Lauterbach. Kleinholz took a different tone with Lauterbach: Lauterbach was stupid but strong, and if you pushed him too far he simply lashed out. You couldn’t needle Lauterbach too much; you had to take another tack. But Emil knew how to do that too.

‘Just look at you, Mr Lauterbach. What a wretched sight. Black eye. Poppy nose. Mouth you can barely open to speak, and your arm … yet you’re going to give me a full day’s work? And want a full day’s pay, I’ll bet.’

‘My work’s all right,’ said Lauterbach.

‘Easy does it, Mr Lauterbach, easy does it. You know, politics
is all right, and National Socialist is quite possibly very much all right, we’ll see at the next elections and act accordingly, but I don’t see why I in particular should bear the cost …’

‘I can work,’ said Lauterbach.

‘Well maybe,’ said Emil mildly. ‘We shall see. I don’t think you’ll be doing the work I’ve got on today … You’re a sick man.’

‘I’ll do any——ing work,’ said Lauterbach.

‘If you say so, Mr Lauterbach! But I don’t think that’s quite true. The Brommen woman has let me down today, and we’ve got to winnow the winter barley again, and I thought of asking you to turn the fan …’

That was the height of meanness even for Emil. For working the fan was not a clerk’s job in the first place, and secondly you needed two very sound, strong arms to do it.

‘There you are,’ said Kleinholz. ‘It’s as I thought. You’re unfit for duty. Just go home, Mr Lauterbach, but I’ll dock your pay. What you’ve got is not an illness.’

‘I’ll work,’ raged Lauterbach defiantly. ‘I’ll turn the fan. Never you fear, Mr Kleinholz!’

‘Well, as you like, I’ll come up to you before twelve, Lauterbach, and tell you if I’m going to fire you.’

Lauterbach muttered something unintelligible and cleared off.

Now the two of them were alone. Now he’ll start on me, thought Pinneberg. But to his surprise Kleinholz said quite affably: ‘Nothing to choose between them, those colleagues of yours: about as different as a heap of dung and a heap of manure.’

Pinneberg did not reply.

‘You look quite festive today. I can’t give you any dirty work, can I? Make me up a statement for the Hoenow estate account, as of the 31st August. And be careful when you come to the straw deliveries. They delivered oat straw instead of rye straw that one time, and there’s a query against that load.’

‘I know about that, Mr Kleinholz,’ said Pinneberg. ‘That was the load that went to the racing-stables in Karlshorst.’

‘Good man,’ said Emil. ‘You get things right, Pinneberg. If only all my people were like you! Good, that’s what you’ll do then. Good morning.’

And he was away.

Oh Lammchen! rejoiced Pinneberg. Oh my Lammchen! We’re safe, we can stop worrying about my job and the Shrimp.

He got up and fetched the folder with the specialist’s report, the straw-wagon having been examined by a specialist on the occasion in question.

‘So what was the balance at 31st March? Debit. Three thousand, seven hundred and sixty-five marks, fifty-five. So …’

He looked up, thunderstruck. ‘And I, stupid fool that I am, gave my word of honour and agreed with the others that we’d all give notice if one of us was sacked. I put them up to it myself; what an idiot, what a dumb clot! I mustn’t do that. He’d simply throw us all out!’

He jumped to his feet; he paced up and down.

It was Pinneberg’s moment of truth, in which he wrestled with his angel.

He thought that he would certainly not get another job in Ducherow. Nor, as things stood at present, anywhere else in the world either. He thought of how he had been unemployed for three months before he went to Bergmanns, and how dreadful that had been when he was on his own; but now there were two of them and a third on the way! He thought of his colleagues whom deep down he couldn’t stand, and both of whom could much more readily bear to be sacked than he. He thought that it was far from certain they would keep their word if he was sacked. He reflected that if he gave notice and Kleinholz let him go, he would not be entitled to unemployment benefit for quite a long time, as a penalty for having given up a job. He thought of Lammchen, of old
Bergmann the rag-trade Jew, of Marie Kleinholz, and suddenly of his mother. Then he thought of a picture out of the
Miracles of Motherhood
showing an embryo in the third month; that was how far the Shrimp had developed already, a naked mole, gruesome to contemplate. He thought about that for quite a long time.

He paced to and fro, getting very heated.

‘What should I do? I can’t simply … And the others certainly wouldn’t! So? … But I don’t want to be a rat. I don’t want to be ashamed of myself. If only Lammchen were here! If only I could ask her! Lammchen is so upright; she always knows what you can do without having anything on your conscience.’

He rushed to the window of the office; he stared at Market Place. If only she would come by. Now! She was due to pass this way early today, as she said she wanted to get some meat. ‘Dear Lammchen, kind Lammchen, please come by now.’

The door opened, and Marie Kleinholz came in.

It was an old prerogative of the women of the house of Kleinholz to be allowed, on Monday morning, when nobody visited the office, to lay out their washing on the big office table. And it was further the right of these ladies to demand of the clerks that they should find that table cleared. This, however, in the excitement of the day, had not been done.

‘The table!’ said Marie Kleinholz sharply.

Pinneberg sprang into action. ‘One moment! So sorry; it’ll be ready at once.’

He threw samples of wheat into cupboard drawers, stacked ring-binders on the window-sill, was temporarily at a loss where to put the corn-tester.

‘Hurry along, man,’ said Marie, trying to pick a quarrel. ‘I’m standing here with my washing.’

‘Just one moment,’ said Pinneberg very gently.

‘A moment, a moment,’ she nagged. ‘It could have been done long ago. But if you must watch out for tarts at the window …’

Pinneberg preferred not to answer. Marie flung her load of washing with panache onto the now empty table. ‘It’s filthy! Only just got this stuff clean and straight away it’s dirty again. Where’ve you put the duster?’

‘Dunno,’ said Pinneberg with the beginnings of ill-humour, and pretended to look for it.

‘Every Saturday evening I hang a fresh duster here, and by Monday it’s gone. Somebody must be stealing them.’

‘That’s a bit much,’ said Pinneberg crossly.

‘What d’you mean a bit much? No one’s accusing you. Did I say anything about you stealing dusters? I just said somebody. Some man. I don’t believe girls like that ever pick up a duster; far too common for them.’

‘Listen, Miss Kleinholz,’ began Pinneberg, then thought better of it. ‘Oh never mind!’ he said, and sat down to work in his place.

‘Yes, you’d better be quiet. Canoodling with a girl like that on the public road …’

She waited a while to see if her dart had struck. Then: ‘All I saw was the canoodling, I don’t know what else may have happened. I’m only talking about what I could swear to …’

She was silent again. Pinneberg thought desperately: ‘I must hold my tongue. She hasn’t got a lot of washing there. Then she’s bound to wander off …’

Marie took up the thread of her chatter again. ‘Awfully common she looked. All got up.’

Pause.

‘Father says he saw her in the “Palm Grotto”, she was a waitress.’

There was another pause.

‘Lots of men like girls to be common; it turns them on, Father says.’

Another pause.

‘I’m sorry for you, Mr Pinneberg.’

‘And I’m sorry for you,’ said Pinneberg.

A fairly long pause. Marie was rather taken aback. Finally: ‘If you get cheeky with me, Mr Pinneberg, I’ll tell Father. He’ll throw you out on the spot.’

‘What do you mean: cheeky?’ said Pinneberg. ‘I said exactly the same to you as you said to me.’

Silence now reigned. It look as though it had set in for good. The sprinkler rattled every so often when Marie Kleinholz shook it over the washing; the steel pen tapped the ink bottle.

Suddenly Marie gave a cry. She rushed triumphantly to the window. ‘There she is, the silly cow! Goodness, she’s plastered with make-up. It’s enough to make you sick.’

Pinneberg stood up and looked out. The person going by outside was Emma Pinneberg with the string shopping-bag, his Lammchen, the most wonderful thing in the world to him. And what Marie had been saying about ‘make-up’ was a lie, that he knew.

He stood up and stared after Lammchen until she had gone round the corner and disappeared into Bahnhofstrasse. He turned round and went towards Miss Kleinholz. His face was disturbing to look at, very white and threaded with lines on the forehead, but strangely alive about the eyes.

‘Listen to me, Miss Kleinholz,’ he said, sticking his hands firmly in his pockets as a precaution. He swallowed and began again. ‘Listen, Miss Kleinholz. If you ever say anything like that again, I’ll hit you right in your ugly mug.’

She tried to say something, her thin lips twitched, her little bird-like head jerked towards him.

‘You keep your mouth shut,’ he said coarsely. ‘That’s my wife, do you understand!’ And now his hand did leave his pocket, and the gleaming wedding-ring was held right under her nose. ‘And you can count yourself lucky if you ever in your life turn out half such a decent woman as she is.’

With that, Pinneberg turned on his heel, he had said everything he had to say and he felt wonderfully relieved. Consequences? What consequences? They could do what they liked, all of them! Pinneberg turned on his heel, and walked back to his seat. For a long time Marie said nothing at all. He squinted over at her. She wasn’t looking at him. She was pressing her poor, small head with the thin ash-blond hair against the window. But the other woman had gone; she could not see her any more.

And then she sat down on a chair, laid her head on the edge of the table and began to cry, real heartbreaking sobs.

‘Oh God,’ said Pinneberg, a little (but only a little) ashamed of his brutality, ‘it wasn’t meant as badly as that, Miss Kleinholz.’

But she was weeping floods of tears; it must have been doing her good in some way, and in between she stammered something to the effect that she couldn’t help being like she was, that she’d always thought him a thoroughly decent man, quite different from his colleagues, and was he really married, ah, not in church then, and he shouldn’t be afraid of her telling her father, because she wouldn’t, and whether his girl was from here, she didn’t look like it, and what she’d said before she’d said only to annoy him, she looked very nice.

So it went on, and would have gone on a fair while longer, had not the sharp voice of Mrs Kleinholz rung out: ‘What are you doing with the washing, Marie? We’ve got to get on with the mangling!’

With a horrified ‘Oh God!’ Marie Kleinholz sprang up from table and chair, grabbed her washing and dashed out. Pinneberg, however, remained seated, feeling actually quite satisfied. He whistled to himself, calculating zealously and glancing up every so often to see whether Lammchen might not be coming back. But perhaps she had already passed.

And so it turned eleven, then half-past eleven, then quarter to twelve, and Pinneberg was already singing his ‘Hosanna, praise be to my Lammchen, we’re safe for another month’, and everything
might yet have gone well. But at five to twelve, father Kleinholz came into the office, surveyed his book-keeper, went and stared out of the window and spoke, in a kindly tone: ‘I’ve been humming and hawing, humming and hawing, Pinneberg. I’d prefer to keep you and let one of the others go. But the fact that you wished the Sunday stable duty on to me simply so that you could go and amuse yourself with your women, that I can’t forgive, and that’s why I’m going to give you notice.’

‘Mr Kleinholz!’ began Pinneberg in the firm and manly resolve of explaining his case in such detail that it would take them way beyond the latest possible time for giving him notice, which was twelve o’clock. ‘Mr Kleinholz, I …’

But at that moment Emil Kleinholz cried out furiously: ‘Damn it, there’s that woman again! I’m giving you notice till 31st October, Mr Pinneberg!’