Little Man, What Now? (42 page)

‘I’ll deduct income tax and health insurance from your wife’s money,’ said the woman, calming the dogs.

‘You do that,’ said Pinneberg. ‘And I’ll come round tomorrow for the receipts from the tax office and the health insurance.’

‘Let your wife try coming to me for work again!’ shouted the woman.

‘That’ll be six marks,’ said Pinneberg.

‘Of all shameless louts …’ said the woman. ‘If my husband were here …’

‘But he’s not,’ said Pinneberg.

And then the six marks appeared. There they lay, three two mark pieces, on top of the iron railing. Pinneberg couldn’t pick them up at once, the woman had to go back with her dogs first. Then he took them.

‘Thank you very much,’ he said, raising his hat.

‘Mmm, mmm,’ said the Shrimp.

‘Yes, money,’ cried Pinneberg. ‘It’s money, little Shrimp. And now let’s go home.’

He moved off slowly with the pushchair, never turning round once to look at the woman or the villa; he was tired, and desolate, and sad.

The Shrimp chatted and crowed.

His father did answer him every so often, but it wasn’t the right sort of answer and in the end the Shrimp too fell silent.

WHY THE PINNEBERGS DON’T LIVE WHERE THEY LIVE. JOACHIM HEILBUTT’S PICTURE AGENCY. LEHMANN GETS THE CHOP

Two hours later Pinneberg had cooked a meal for himself and the Shrimp. They had eaten it together and then he had put the Shrimp to bed. Now he was waiting behind the partially-closed kitchen door for the child to go to sleep. He wasn’t ready to go to sleep yet, however, and he kept calling him: ‘Dad-Dad! Dad-Dad!’ but Pinneberg stood stock still and waited.

The time was approaching when he would have to go to the station. He had to get the one-o’clock train if he was to be there punctually for the payment of his unemployment benefit, and the thought of being unpunctual, with the best excuse in the world, was simply grotesque.

The Shrimp was still calling: ‘Dad-Dad, Dad-Dad!’

He could, of course, simply go. He had tied the child into his little bed, nothing could happen to him, but he felt easier in his mind when he was asleep. It wasn’t pleasant to think of the child calling in vain for five hours, perhaps six, the whole afternoon till Lammchen came back.

Pinneberg peeped through the door. The Shrimp had gone
quiet. He was asleep. Pinneberg crept silently out of the summer-house, he locked up, then stood for a moment at the window to hear whether the Shrimp had woken up when he shut the door. Silence.

Pinneberg set off at a trot. He might still get the train, but it wasn’t likely. No, actually he had to catch it. Their great mistake of course had been to hang onto their expensive flat at Puttbreese’s a year after he lost his job. Forty marks rent on ninety marks income. It had been madness, but they just couldn’t resign themselves to giving up that one last thing, their own home: the space to be alone together … forty marks rent, and the last of his wages went on it, and Jachmann’s money went on it, and then there was nothing more, and that went on it. Debts. And Puttbreese stood there saying: ‘Now, young man, where’s the money. Or shall we start moving you out? I told you free removal was on offer—onto the street.’

It was Lammchen who always mollified the master-carpenter. ‘You’ll pay, young woman,’ said Puttbreese. ‘But what that young man of yours is about I don’t know. I’d have found work long ago …’

Anxiety and arrears mounted up, and impotent hatred for the man in the blue overalls. Finally Pinneberg hadn’t dared to go home. He sat all day long in some park or other, or wandered aimlessly through the streets seeing in the shops how many good things there were for good money. While doing this it occurred to him that he might as well try to find Heilbutt. He had only made the one attempt, at Mrs Witt’s, but there were also the police to try, the electoral roll, the register of residents. It wasn’t just to keep himself busy that Pinneberg was casting his net for Heilbutt. At the back of his mind was that conversation he had had with Heilbutt once about the business of his own that Heilbutt was going to start, and the first man he was going to employ.

It hadn’t turned out to be very difficult to find him. He still lived in Berlin; he had recorded his change of address in the
proper manner, but now he no longer lived in the East. He had made it into the centre of town. ‘Joachim Heilbutt Picture Agency’ it said on the door.

Heilbutt had indeed got his own business. Here was a man who hadn’t allowed himself to be walked over, but had still got on. And Heilbutt had also been perfectly willing to employ his erstwhile colleague and friend. But a commission-only job was all he had to offer. A respectable rate of commission was agreed, but after two days of earning nothing Pinneberg gave the job back.

Oh, he didn’t deny that there was money to be earned there, but he wasn’t capable of it, he didn’t have it in him. It wasn’t that he was prudish, he just couldn’t do the job.

Heilbutt had come to grief over a nude photo. Because of a nude photo he had been forced out of a job that was absorbing in itself and not without prospects. Where other people would have avoided nude photos like the plague, Heilbutt made his stumbling-block into the cornerstone of his existence. He possessed an extraordinarily valuable and varied collection of nude photos: not models of easy virtue with used bodies, but fresh young girls, vivacious women—Heilbutt had become a dealer in nude photos.

He was a careful man; a bit of retouching, a different head didn’t cost the world and nobody could point to a photo and say: ‘Surely that’s …’ But plenty of people would stop and wonder: ‘Could that be …?’

Heilbutt tried the small ads, but there was too much competition in the field. He did some business but not enough. Heilbutt had three young people going around town (Pinneberg had been the fourth for two days) selling these photos to dubious girls and seedy landladies, to the porters of certain small hotels and the toilet attendants of certain restaurants. It was big business and it was getting bigger as Heilbutt learned what the customers required. There was no telling how big the appetite for these things was in a city of four million people. The possibilities were endless.

Heilbutt was sorry that his friend Pinneberg hadn’t been able to commit himself to the enterprise. It had a big future. Heilbutt reflected that there were times when even the best of wives could hold a man back: the best were actually the worst in that respect. Pinneberg had simply found it too distasteful to have to listen to some old toilet-attendant telling him what his customers thought of the last collection, and what aspects of the photos had to be more distinct and why. Once upon a time Heilbutt had been a naturist, he didn’t deny it, but he said: ‘I’m a practical man, Pinneberg. I live life as it is.’

But he also added: ‘I won’t let myself be kicked, Pinneberg. I am who I am, and people can take it or leave it.’

No, there had been no quarrel between them. Heilbutt had understood his friend’s position very well. ‘It doesn’t suit you, that’s all. But what are we to do with you now?’

That was Heilbutt all over: a friend in need. He and Pinneberg didn’t exactly belong together any more, they’d never really done so in fact, but he saw the need for help and wanted to give it.

And then it was that Heilbutt thought of this summer-house. It was rather a long way off, forty kilometres to the East, right out of Berlin, but with its own piece of land. ‘I was left it by some aunt or other three years ago, Pinneberg. What am I to do with a summer-house? You could live there, and plant your own vegetables and potatoes.’

‘The fresh air would be great for the Shrimp,’ Pinneberg had said.

‘You needn’t pay any rent,’ Heilbutt had said. ‘The thing’s standing empty, and you can put the garden in order for me. There’s just the expenses involved, like the land and the road taxes and I don’t know what else I have to pay …’

Heilbutt reckoned it up. ‘So shall we say ten marks a month? Is that too much for you?’

‘No, no,’ said Pinneberg. ‘It’s wonderful, Heilbutt.’ He thought
about all these things as he was sitting in the train—he had in fact managed to catch it—staring at his ticket. It was a yellow ticket and cost fifty pfennigs. The return journey cost fifty pfennigs as well, and since Pinneberg had to travel in to the labour exchange in town twice a week, that was two marks out of his eighteen marks allowance gone at once. His blood boiled each time he paid for a ticket.

There were in fact special cheap tickets for smallholders, but in order to get one Pinneberg had to live where he actually did live, and that he wasn’t allowed to do. There was also a labour exchange in the village where he lived. He would have been able to sign on there, had he been allowed to live there. For the purposes of signing on Pinneberg lived at Puttbreese’s, today, tomorrow and for all eternity, whether he could afford the rent or not.

He had unwelcome but constantly-recurring memories of that time in July and August when he had gone from pillar to post trying to get permission to move out of town to the settlement, and be transferred from the Berlin labour exchange to the one out there.

‘Only if you can prove that you have a prospect of work out there. Otherwise they won’t accept you.’

No, he couldn’t do that. ‘But I won’t find any work here either!’

‘You can’t know that. Anyway it was here that you became unemployed, not there.’

‘But this saves me thirty marks rent a month.’

‘That has nothing to do with it. That’s not our concern.’

‘The landlord here is throwing me out!’

‘Then the city authorities will find you another home. You only have to register with the police as homeless.’

‘But I’ve even got some land with the summer-house! I could grow my own vegetables and potatoes!’

‘A summer-house. You must know it’s forbidden by law to live in summer-houses?!’

So, there was nothing to be done. The Pinnebergs still officially
lived in Berlin at Puttbreese’s, and Pinneberg had to travel into town twice a week for his money—and go to the hated Puttbreese every fortnight with six marks to pay off his rent arrears.

Sitting in the train for an hour, Pinneberg had gathered up the fuel for quite a lively blaze of rage, hate and bitterness. But it was only a little blaze, and once he was in the grey monotonous crowd that pushed its way through the labour exchange, a crowd with so many different faces and forms of dress, but haunted by the same fears, the same stress, the same bitterness … Oh, what was the point? He was one of them, one of six million actually, pushing past the counters, so why get excited? Tens of thousands were worse off; they didn’t have a good wife, or they had half a dozen children instead of just the one. Move along there, Pinneberg. Take your money and clear off. We really don’t have any time for you, you’re nothing so special that we can stop for you.

So Pinneberg did move on, past the counters and out onto the street, and went on his way to Puttbreese. Puttbreese was in his workshop making a window.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Puttbreese’, said Pinneberg, in an attempt at fraternization. ‘Are you a house-carpenter as well?’

‘I’m everything, young man,’ said Puttbreese, blinking. ‘I’m not like other people.’

‘No, you aren’t,’ agreed Pinneberg.

‘What’s your son up to?’ asked Puttbreese. ‘What’s he going to be?’

‘I couldn’t tell you for sure,’ said Pinneberg. ‘Here’s the money.’

‘Six marks,’ confirmed the master-carpenter. ‘There’s forty-two still to come. But your young lady is in order.’

‘She is,’ agreed Pinneberg.

‘You say that as if it was your doing. But it’s got nothing to do with you.’

‘I know,’ said Pinneberg peaceably. ‘Any post?’

‘Post!’ exclaimed the master-carpenter. ‘Post for you! A
job-offer perhaps? A man was here.’

‘A man?’

‘Yes, a man, young fellow. At least I think it was. All quiet in town?’

‘What d’you mean: all quiet?’

‘The police were having a punch-up with the Communists again. Or the Nazis. Broke some shop-windows in town. Didn’t you see any of it?’

‘No,’ said Pinneberg. ‘I didn’t. What did the man want?’

‘No idea. Are you a Communist?’

‘Me? No.’

‘That’s odd. If I were you, I’d be a Communist.’

‘Are you one?’

‘Me? Certainly not. I’m a tradesman, how could I be a Communist?’

‘I suppose not. What did the man want?’

‘Which man? Oh, stop bothering me about him. He stood around here jawing for half an hour. I gave him your address.’

‘The one out there?’

‘Certainly, young fellow. The one out there. He knew this one. He came here.’

‘But we expressly agreed …’ began Pinneberg heatedly.

‘It will be all right, young man. Your wife won’t mind. You haven’t got a ladder in your summer-house, have you? Otherwise I’d be out there one day. Very nice thighs your wife has …’

‘Oh, go to …’ began Pinneberg, flying into a rage. ‘Will you just tell me what the man wanted?’

‘You should take off your collar,’ taunted the master-carpenter. ‘The thing’s grubby. Out of work for over a year and still walking around in a stiff collar. There’s no helping people like you.’

‘You can just st …’ screamed Pinneberg, and slammed the workshop door from the outside.

Whereupon the master-carpenter stuck out his red head.
‘Come along, young man, and have a whisky with me. Cheer me up, you do, more than I can say for most.’

Pinneberg wandered off at random, raging inwardly at allowing himself to be made a fool of by the master-carpenter yet again. It was the same every time. He always resolved only to exchange a few words with him, and it always turned out the same. What a feeble clod he was; he never learned, and people could do what they liked with him.

He stopped in front of a dress-shop where there was a fine big mirror. He could see himself full-length, and he saw that he no longer looked at all respectable. His light grey trousers were spotted with roof-tar. His coat was worn and the colour had faded, his shoes were patched all over. Puttbreese was right; it was ridiculous to be wearing a collar. He was unemployed and down in the world, as anyone could tell from twenty steps away. His hand went sharply to his neck and he tore off collar and tie and put them in his coat pocket. He didn’t actually look much different. There wasn’t much left to spoil in his appearance. Heilbutt wouldn’t say anything, but he’d look volumes.