Little Man, What Now?

by Hans Fallada

  ‘What do you mean, the soap?’ asked Pinneberg, baffled. ‘Well …’ said Jachmann, grinning. ‘When the son reaches out at bathtime, and steals the mother’s soap out of the tub, he’s on his way … Taxi! Hey, taxi!’ bellowed the giant suddenly. ‘I ought to have been at Alexanderplatz half-an-hour ago, the chaps are going to tear me off a strip.’ From the car window he shouted again: ‘Second courtyard, right-hand side. Don’t say anything. Cheers and good luck. Kiss on the hand to the young lady. Good hunting …!’

  Second courtyard, right-hand side. Everywhere was Mandels. Heavens, what a large store. No shop where Pinneberg had worked to date was one-tenth as large as this. Not one-hundredth perhaps. And he promised himself to graft all he was able, to make out well at the job, to be long-suffering and not lose his temper. ‘Oh Lammchen, oh Shrimp!’

  Second courtyard, right-hand side. There on the ground floor: ‘Mandels, Personnel office.’ And another gigantic notice: ‘No vacancies. Applications futile’. A third notice: ‘Enter without knocking.’ Pinneberg entered without knocking.

  A counter. Behind it five typewriters. Behind the five typewriters, five girls, some younger, some older. All five looked up, then down, and continued to bang away on their machines; no one had seen that someone had come in. Pinneberg stood for a while and waited. Then he said to a girl in a green blouse who was the nearest to him: ‘Please. Miss …’

  ‘Whatcha want?’ said Green-blouse, looking as indignant as if he had made an urgent, and improper, suggestion …

  ‘I’d like to speak to Mr Lehmann.’

  ‘Notice outside!’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Notice outside!!’

  ‘I don’t understand, Miss.’

  Green-Blouse was highly annoyed: ‘Read the notice outside. No vacancies.’

  ‘I’ve read it. But I’ve got an appointment with Mr Lehmann. He’s expecting me.’

  The young lady—Pinneberg thought she looked quite ladylike, quite nice really (did she speak like that to her boss as well as her colleagues?)—the young lady looked crossly at him. ‘Form!’ she said. Then, getting quite worked up: ‘You have to fill in a form!’

  Pinneberg followed her glance. On a desk in the corner lay a block of forms; a pencil was hanging on a chain.

  ‘Mr/Mrs/Miss … would like to speak to Mr/Mrs/Miss …

  Purpose of interview (be specific) …’

  Pinneberg put down his name first, then Lehmann’s, but he hesitated about the purpose of the visit, about which one had to be so specific. He wavered between ‘acquaintance’ and ‘job’. But the strict young lady wouldn’t be likely to pass either of those, and so he wrote ‘Jachmann’.

  ‘There you are, Miss.’

  ‘Put it down there.’

  The slip lay on the counter, the typewriters hammered on. Pinneberg waited.

  After a while he said gently: ‘Miss, I believe Mr Lehmann is waiting for me.’

  No answer.

  ‘Miss, please!’

  The lady made an abrupt and indeterminate noise like a snake—‘sssss’.

  ‘What if they’re all like this here?’ thought Pinneberg dejectedly. And continued to wait.

  After a while a messenger in a grey uniform came in.

  ‘Form!’ said the young girl.

  The messenger took the form, read it, surveyed Pinneberg and vanished.

  This time Pinneberg did not have long to wait. The messenger came back, said quite politely: ‘Mr Lehmann will see you!’ and led him through the barrier, across a passage and into a room.

  It wasn’t Lehmann’s room yet. But it was his anteroom.

  There sat a not-so-young lady with a yellowish complexion. ‘That’s his private secretary’, thought Pinneberg, awed. And the lady said with a melancholy, long-suffering demeanour: ‘Take a seat, please. Mr Lehmann is still engaged.’

  Pinneberg took a seat. The anteroom had a lot of filing-cabinets in it, the roll-top fronts were all up and the spring folders were grouped in batches: blue, yellow, green, red. Every folder had a label, on which he read a name: Fichte, Filchner, Fischer.

  ‘Those are the names of employees,’ he thought. ‘Personnel files.’ Some of these life-stories were very thin, some medium-thick; there were no really thick life-stories. The not-so-young spinster with the yellow complexion went back and forth. She picked up a carboncopy, looked at it with a long-suffering expression, sighed, punched holes in it. She took out a file, put the carboncopy in it. Was it the sack or a wage-rise? Did the letter say that Miss Bier must be friendlier to the customers?

  ‘Maybe, oh, maybe, tomorrow …’ thought Pinneberg, ‘this spinster with the yellowish face is going to put in a personnel file labelled Johannes Pinneberg, maybe this afternoon even. Oh I do hope so.’ The telephone buzzed. The spinster took a file and put the letter in it. The telephone buzzed. She clamped the letters down, and put back the file into its compartment. The telephone buzzed. The spinster lifted the receiver, and said, in her long-suffering, sour voice: ‘Personnel department. Yes, Mr Lehmann is here. Who wants to speak to him? Director Kussnick? Yes, please bring Director Kussnick to the phone. Then I’ll put him through to Mr Lehmann.’

  A short pause. The spinster bent right over the telephone to listen; she seemed to see the person on the other end of the line, a delicate pink coloured her pale cheeks. Her voice was still melancholy, but a tiny bit sharp, as she said: ‘I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to put you through to Mr Lehmann until the caller is on the line.’

  A pause while she listened. Then, a tiny bit sharper: ‘You can only put Director Kussnick through when Mr Lehmann is on the line?’ Pause. Proudly: ‘I can only put Mr Lehmann through when Director Kussnick is on the line.’ Now the dialogue speeded up and the tone grew sharper:

  ‘You were the one who called!’

  ‘No, I have my orders.’

  …

  ‘I’ve no time for this sort of thing.’

  …

  ‘No, Mr Kussnick must be on the line.’

  …

  ‘Please. Otherwise I shall hang up.’

  …

  ‘No. It has happened to me too many times already. Later, your boss will be speaking on another line. Mr Lehmann can’t wait.’

  …

  Gentler: ‘Yes, I told you, Mr Lehmann is here. I’ll put you through straight away.’ Pause. Then quite another voice, long-suffering, soft: ‘Director Kussnick …? I’m putting you through to Mr Lehmann.’ Pressing a button and whispering: ‘Mr Lehmann, Director Kussnick is on the line. What?’ She listened with her whole body. Then, stricken: ‘Certainly, Mr Lehmann.’ Pressing the button: ‘Director Kussnick? I’ve just heard that Mr Lehmann has gone to a meeting. No, I can’t reach him. He’s not in the building. No, sir, I didn’t say that Mr Lehmann was here. Your secretary must have got it wrong. No, I can’t say when Mr Lehmann is coming back. No, I didn’t say anything of the kind, your secretary is mistaken. Goodbye.’

  She rang off, still long-suffering but with a touch of pink in her yellow, melancholy face. It seemed to Pinneberg there was something a bit more spirited in her demeanour as she resumed her task of putting papers in personnel files.

  ‘Seemed to do her good, that little row,’ thought Pinneberg. ‘She’s pleased her colleague in Kussnick’s office is going to get some stick, provided she’s sitting pretty herself.’

  The telephone buzzed. Twice. Sharply. The file flew from her hand onto the ground, the spinster was hanging on the line. ‘Yes, Mr Lehmann? Yes, straight away.’ And, to Pinneberg: ‘Mr Lehmann will see you now.’

  She opened the brown padded door in front of him.

  ‘A good thing I saw all that,’ thought Pinneberg as he went through the door. ‘Look really humble. Say as little as possible. Yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir.’

  It was a gigantic room, with one wall almost all window. In front of the window stood a mammoth desk with nothing on it but a telephone. And a mammoth yellow pencil. Not one sheet of p
aper, nothing. At one side of the desk stood a chair—empty. On the other side a small wicker chair and on it, that must be Mr Lehmann, an elongated man with a yellow face criss-crossed with lines, a little black beard, and a sickly-looking bald patch. Very dark, round, piercing eyes.

  Pinneberg stood in front of the desk; spiritually he was, so to speak, standing to attention, and he had sunk his head between his shoulders so as not to appear too tall. For it was only for form’s sake that Mr Lehmann was sitting on a wicker chair; to indicate the gulf between them he ought to have been sitting on the uppermost rung of a step-ladder.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Mr Pinneberg in a quiet, polite tone, and bowed.

  Mr Lehmann said nothing. But he picked up the mammoth pencil, and set it in a perpendicular position.

  Pinneberg waited.

  ‘What do you want?’ snapped Mr Lehmann.

  To Pinneberg it was a body-blow; one below the belt.

  ‘I … I thought … Mr Jachmann …’ His breath ran out.

  Mr Lehmann observed him. ‘I’m not interested in Mr Jachmann. I’m asking what you want.’

  ‘I am applying,’ said Pinneberg, very slowly, so that his breath wouldn’t fail him again, ‘for a position as salesman.’

  Mr Lehmann put the pen in a horizontal position.

  ‘We’re not taking on anyone,’ he said definitively. And waited.

  Mr Lehmann was a very patient man. He continued to wait. Finally he said, standing the pencil upright again: ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Perhaps later …?’ stammered Pinneberg.

  ‘In times like these!’ replied Mr Lehmann dismissively.

  Silence.

  ‘So I can go,’ thought Pinneberg. ‘Unexpected and unwanted. Again. Oh, poor Lammchen!’ He was about to say goodbye when Mr Lehmann said: ‘Show me your references.’

  Pinneberg spread them out, with a trembling hand, genuinely frightened. He didn’t know what Mr Lehmann was playing at, but Mandels department store had almost a thousand employees and Mr Lehmann was the personnel officer, and so a big man. Perhaps he was simply playing games.

  So Pinneberg spread out his references, trembling; his apprenticeship certificate, then references from Wendheim, Bergmann, Kleinholz.

  They were all very good. Mr Lehmann read them very slowly and impassively. Then he looked up and seemed to be reflecting. Perhaps, perhaps …

  Mr Lehmann spoke: ‘We don’t stock fertilizers.’

  So, it was out! And of course he looked a fool; all he could do was stammer: ‘I thought … really I’m in menswear … that was just a temporary job.’

  Lehmann was enjoying himself. It was so choice that he repeated it: ‘No we don’t stock fertilizers. Or potatoes,’ he added.

  He could have mentioned corn, or seeds, all of which were on Emil Kleinholz’s letterhead, but the potatoes were quite unsatisfactory enough. He growled: ‘Where’s your employee’s insurance card?’

  ‘What is all this?’ thought Pinneberg. ‘What does he want my card for? Is it just to torment me?’ And he handed over the green card. Mr Lehmann examined it at length, looked at the stamps, nodded.

  ‘And your income-tax card.’

  Pinneberg handed that over as well, and it too was carefully examined. Then there was a pause, calculated to set Pinneberg’s feelings see-sawing between hope and despair.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Lehmann finally, laying his hand on the papers. ‘We’re not taking on any new staff. We can’t. We’re laying off old staff.’

  So that was that. The last word. But Mr Lehmann’s hand was still lying on the papers; he had even laid the mammoth yellow pencil on them.

  ‘However …’ said Mr Lehmann. ‘However we are allowed to take on staff from our branches. Particularly competent staff. Are you competent?’

  Pinneberg whispered something. But it wasn’t a protest, and it satisfied Mr Lehmann.

  ‘You, Mr Pinneberg, will be taken on from our branch in Breslau. You come from Breslau, don’t you?’

  Another whisper, but again it satisfied Mr Lehmann.

  ‘In the gentlemen’s clothing department, where you will be working, there isn’t anyone from Breslau, you understand.’

  Pinneberg uttered a murmur.

  ‘Good. Then you’ll start tomorrow morning. Report at eight-thirty to Miss Semmler next door. You’ll then sign the contract and the company’s rules and regulations, and Miss Semmler will tell you what to do. Good morning.’

  ‘Good morning,’ responded Pinneberg, and bowed. He went backwards to the door. He had his hand on the door handle when Mr Lehmann whispered, loud enough to be heard across the room: ‘My best to your father. Tell your father I’ve taken you on. Tell Holger that I’d be free on Wednesday evening. Good morning, Mr Pinneberg.’

  And without those last words Pinneberg would never have known that Mr Lehmann was capable of a smile, rather a pinched one, but a smile nonetheless.

  PINNEBERG WALKS THROUGH THE LITTLE TIERGARTEN, IS AFRAID AND CANNOT BE HAPPY

  Pinneberg was outside on the street again. He felt tired, as tired as if he had been working to the limit of his endurance all day, as if he had been in mortal danger and only just escaped, as if he had had a shock. After having been stretched to screaming pitch, his nerves sagged, and would take no more. Slowly he started to wander home.

  It was a real autumn day. In Ducherow there would have been a lot of wind, blowing continuously from the same direction. Here in Berlin it came from all directions, round the corners this way and that, with hurrying clouds which no one looked up at, and now and then a little sun. The pavement was wet and dry, but it was soon going to be wet all over again before it had got completely dry.

  So now Pinneberg had a father, a real live father. And since that father was called Jachmann, and he was called Pinneberg, that made him illegitimate. But being illegitimate had undoubtedly helped him with Lehmann, who looked a complete lecher, and he could just imagine how Jachmann had portrayed this fictitious youthful folly to him. And, because of Jachmann’s monstrous invention, he had been lucky again, he had become the man from the branch in Breslau and had snapped up a job. References: useless. Competence: useless. Good appearance: useless. Humility: useless. Everything useless, except the intervention of a type like Jachmann!

  And what sort of a type was he?

  What had been going on in the flat last night? They’d been laughing, bellowing, boozing. Lammchen and her young man had lain in their princely bed and pretended not to hear. They hadn’t spoken about it: after all she was his mother, but the place wasn’t kosher, certainly not.

  How did Pinneberg know? He had been round the back; the lavatory was round the back, and to get to it you had to go through that Berlin-style living-room, since the Pinnebergs slept at the front. And really cosy it had looked in that living-room with just the mushroom-shaped lamp on, and the whole company sitting on the two big divans. The ladies, very young, very elegant, very high-society, and those Dutchmen—Dutchmen were supposed to be blond and fat, but these were dark, tall and thin. And all of them were sitting around drinking wine and smoking. And Holger Jachmann, who was walking up and down in his shirt sleeves as usual, was just at that moment saying: ‘Nina, will you stop being all refined and making a fuss; I hate that.’ And he didn’t sound nearly as friendly and jovial as he usually did.

  And in the midst of it all was Mrs Mia Pinneberg. Not that she stuck out too much, she’d made herself up wonderfully, so that she only looked slightly, ever so slightly older than the young girls. She’d undoubtedly been a part of whatever was going on, but what had been going on till four in the morning? True there had been long periods during which nothing was heard but a faint murmur in the distance, and then suddenly there would be another fifteen minutes of noisy merriment. Cards. They must have been playing cards for money, with two painted young girls, Claire and Nina, and three Dutchmen, for whom Mullensiefen was meant to have been invited, but in the end Jachmann’s arts had sufficed. Wasn’t that clear
enough, Pinneberg? Though of course it might have been something quite different …

  What sort of thing? If Pinneberg knew anybody, he knew his mother. She had good reason to get mad if he so much as mentioned the bar. And that business was different from how she said it was. It wasn’t ten years ago, it was five, and he hadn’t looked through a curtain, he had sat at a table, and three tables along sat Mrs Mia Pinneberg. But she hadn’t seen him, she was too far gone for that. Manager in a bar! She needed managing herself. At first she hadn’t been able to deny it and spun some story about a birthday party. Later on, the drunkenness and necking at that birthday party was all forgotten, gone, denied, and all that had happened was that he’d looked through a curtain and his managerial mother had stood respectably behind the bar. That was what it had been like then—so what was to be expected now?

  It was all too clear.

  And here he was back in the Little Tiergarten. Pinneberg had known it since childhood. It had never been particularly pretty, no comparison with its larger brother on the other side of the Spree, just a makeshift bit of green. But on this first of October, half wet and half dry, half cloudy, half sunny, with the wind blowing out of all corners and a lot of ugly brownish-yellow leaves, it looked particularly desolate. It wasn’t empty, far from it. Masses of people were there, clothed in grey, and sallow-faced. Unemployed people, waiting for something, they didn’t themselves know what, for who waited for work any more …? They were just standing around, without any plans; it was equally unpleasant at home, so why shouldn’t they stand around? There was no sense in going home now, since they always ended up there anyway, however reluctantly, and there was plenty of time for that.

  Pinneberg, however, ought to go home. He ought to go home quickly, as Lammchen would be waiting for him. But he lingered among the unemployed, went a few steps, then stopped again. Externally, he didn’t belong to them, his outer shell was smart. He was wearing the reddish-brown winter ulster that Bergmann had let him have for thirty-eight marks, and the hard black hat, also one of Bergmanns’, no longer completely in fashion, the brim’s too wide, so shall we say three marks twenty, Pinneberg?