Little Man, What Now?

by Hans Fallada

  ‘Well, you have a right to expect something for sixty marks,’ said the discontented voice of the old lady, but not quite as discontented as before.

  ‘Do you like it too, Franz?’ asked the blonde Else. ‘You’re the one it’s for, after all.’

  ‘I suppose so …,’ said Franz.

  ‘Now, the trousers to go with it …,’ began the sister-in-law.

  Buying the trousers wasn’t nearly such a performance. Agreement was reached quickly; even to the extent of choosing an expensive pair. The total on the cash register amounted to over ninety-five marks. The old lady said once more: ‘I tell you, at Obermeyers …’, but no one was listening.

  Pinneberg bowed again at the cash desk, an extra bow. Then he returned to his post, as proud as a general after a victory in the field and as worn-out as a soldier. Next to the trousers stood Heilbutt, looking across at him.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Pinneberg. ‘You saved the day, Heilbutt.’

  ‘It wasn’t me, Pinneberg,’ said Heilbutt. ‘You wouldn’t have lost that sale. Not you. You’re a born salesman, Pinneberg.’

  ON THE THREE TYPES OF SALESMAN AND WHICH TYPE IS PREFERRED BY UNDER-MANAGER JÄNECKE. INVITATION TO A SNACK

  Pinneberg’s heart swelled with happiness. ‘D’ you really think so, Heilbutt? D’you really think I’m a born salesman?’

  ‘But you know that yourself, Pinneberg. You enjoy selling.’

  ‘I enjoy dealing with people,’ said Pinneberg. ‘I like working out who they are and what angle you have to take to make them buy.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I very seldom lose a sale.’

  ‘I’ve noticed that, Pinneberg.’

  ‘Except that there are impossible ones who don’t really want to buy, just haggle and talk.’

  ‘No one sells anything to them.’

  ‘You do,’ said Pinneberg. ‘You do.’

  ‘Perhaps. No. Well perhaps I do sometimes, because people are frightened of me.’

  ‘You’re so terribly imposing, Heilbutt. People don’t have the nerve to put on airs, however much they’d like to.’ He laughed. ‘I wouldn’t look imposing to a flea. I have to get under people’s skins and guess what they want. Which is why I know how furious they’re going to be at having bought that expensive suit. They’ll all be angry with each other but no one will know exactly why they did it.’

  ‘So why did they buy it, in your opinion, Pinneberg?’

  Pinneberg couldn’t think; he racked his brains. ‘Now I don’t know either … They were all talking at once …’

  Heilbutt smiled.

  ‘There you are you see, you’re laughing, Heilbutt, you’re laughing at me. But I know why it was, it was because you impressed them so.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Heilbutt. ‘Complete nonsense, Pinneberg. You know nobody buys anything for that reason. All I may have done is speeded things up a bit …’

  ‘A lot!’

  ‘No, the deciding factor was that you never got offended. Some of our colleagues …’ and Heilbutt’s dark eyes swept the room until they lighted on the person he was seeking … ‘get offended straight away. If they say: this is a very exclusive model, and the customers says: but I don’t like it, then they snap back with: well, tastes differ, or else they’re so hurt they say nothing at all. You’re not like that, Pinneberg …’

  ‘What’s this, gentlemen?’ said the under-manager, Mr Jänecke, ‘A little chin-wag? Been busy selling already? Have to keep busy. Times are hard and it takes a lot of sales to make up a salesman’s salary.’

  ‘We were just talking, Mr Jänecke,’ said Heilbutt, discreetly restraining Pinneberg by the elbow, ‘about the different types of salesmen there are. We found there were three: the imposing, who sell by inspiring respect, the good guessers, who sell by finding what people want, and the others, who sell purely by chance. What’s your opinion, Mr Jänecke?’

  ‘Very interesting as a theory, gentlemen,’ said Mr Jänecke, smiling. ‘I only know one kind of salesman. The kind who has big figures on his sales record at the end of the day. I know there are still some with low figures, but they aren’t going to be here much longer if I can help it.’

  And with that Mr Jänecke hurried off to spur on someone else, and Heilbutt looked after him and said not at all quietly: ‘Swine.’

  Pinneberg thought it was splendid, just to say ‘Swine’ like that, regardless of the consequences, but it also struck him as a bit risky. Heilbutt was just about to go away, saying, with a nod of the head: ‘Well, Pinneberg …’ when he suddenly asked him: ‘Would you do me a great favour, Heilbutt?’

  Heilbutt was rather taken aback: ‘Eh? Of course, Pinneberg.’

  ‘Would you visit us some time?’ He was even more taken aback. ‘I’ve told my wife so much about you, and she’d love to meet you. If you had the time one day. Just for a snack.’

  Heilbutt smiled again, but it was a delightful smile, out of the corner of his eyes. ‘Of course, Pinneberg. I had no idea you’d like that. I shall be glad to come some time.’

  Pinneberg asked hurriedly: ‘Would it … would it be all right for this evening?’

  ‘This evening?’ Heilbutt thought about it. ‘I’ll just have a look.’ He took a leather-bound notebook out of his pocket. ‘Wait a bit. Tomorrow there’s a lecture on Greek sculpture at the Adult Education Centre. You know about that …’

  Pinneberg nodded.

  ‘And the day after tomorrow it’s my naturist evening. You know I belong to a naturist club … And the next evening I’ve promised to see my girlfriend. So far as I can see, Pinneberg, I’m free tonight.’

  ‘Excellent!’ exclaimed Pinneberg, quite breathless with joy. ‘That suits me down to the ground. If you want to take down my address; it’s 92 Spenerstrasse, second floor.’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Pinneberg,’ noted Heilbutt. ’92 Spenerstrasse. Second floor. The best station for me would be Bellevue. What time?’

  ‘Would eight o’clock do? I’m leaving earlier. I’m free at four, but I’ve got something to do.’

  ‘Well, eight o’clock it is, Pinneberg. I’ll come a bit earlier so the downstairs door isn’t locked.’

  PINNEBERG RECEIVES HIS WAGES, BEHAVES BADLY TO A SALESMAN AND BECOMES THE OWNER OF A DRESSING-TABLE

  Pinneberg stood in front of the door of Mandels department store, one hand clutching the wage-packet in his pocket. He had been working there a month, but all that time he had no idea how much pay he was going to get. When Mr Lehmann had hired him, he had been so pleased to get the job that he hadn’t asked.

  He hadn’t asked his colleagues either.

  ‘If I’d been in Breslau I’d know what Mandels paid,’ he had replied when Lammchen had once pressed for clarity on this point.

  ‘Well, go to the Association.’

  ‘They’re only polite when they want money off you.’

  ‘But they must know, Sonny.’

  ‘We’ll see at the end of the month, Lammchen. They can’t pay under the agreed rate. And the agreed rate for Berlin can’t be bad.’

  So now he had his agreed wage for Berlin, which couldn’t be bad. It was exactly a hundred and seventy marks net! Eighty marks less than Lammchen had expected, sixty marks less than his most pessimistic calculations.

  Robbers! Do they ever once worry their heads about how we’re going to manage? All they ever think is that other people manage with less. And we have to creep and crawl to get it. One hundred and seventy marks net. No joke in Berlin. Mama will have to wait a bit for the rent. A hundred marks, she’s batty, Jachmann was right there. The question was, how he and Lammchen were ever going to get any household goods. They would have to give something to Mama; she was very persistent.

  A hundred and seventy marks, and he had had such a lovely plan. He had wanted to give Lammchen a surprise.

  It had begun one evening with Lammchen pointing at an empty corner in the regal bedroom and saying: ‘A dressing-table would go nicely in there.’

  ‘Do we need one?’ he had aske
d, surprised. He’d thought no further than beds, a leather armchair, and an oak desk.

  ‘Of course not. It’d just be nice. I’d love to do my hair at a dressing-table. Oh, don’t look like that, Sonny love. It’s only a dream.’

  And that’s how it began. Lammchen needed to go on walks in her condition. And now they had something to go and see: dressing-tables. They went on long voyages of discovery, there were some districts and side streets which were one mass of carpenters’ shops and little furniture factories. There they stopped and said, ‘Take a look at that one!’

  ‘All that grain in the wood looks fussy to me.’

  ‘D’you think so?’

  In the end they acquired favourites, the chief of which stood in the shop of a certain Himmlisch in Frankfurter Allee. The speciality of the Himmlisch establishment was bedrooms. They seemed to attach some importance to this fact, since their sign read: ‘Himmlisch for Beds. Modern bedroom-suites a speciality.’

  There had been a bedroom-suite in their window for weeks, not very expensive, seven hundred and ninety-five marks inclusive of mattresses and genuine marble tops. But, in line with the current fashion for chilly night-time excursions, without chamber-pot cupboards. One of the pieces was a dressing-table in Caucasian walnut …

  They always stood for a long time looking at it. It was a good hour-and-a-half’s walk away. Lammchen stood there, and finally said: ‘Ah, Sonny, if one could only buy a thing like that. I think I’d weep for joy.’

  Pinneberg thought a moment ‘The people who could buy it,’ he remarked wisely, ‘wouldn’t weep for joy. But it would be great to be able to.’

  ‘It would,’ confirmed Lammchen, ‘It would be wonderful.’

  And then they turned for home. They always walked arm in arm, with his arm through hers, so that he could feel her breast, now growing fuller. It gave him a pleasant sense of home in these vast streets thronged with strangers. But it was in the course of walking home this way that Pinneberg had come on the idea of surprising Lammchen. They had to begin buying furniture some day, and when they had one piece the rest would surely follow. That was the reason why he had got off at four today. Today was the thirty-first of October, pay day. He hadn’t let out a word of it to Lammchen; he was simply going to have it sent and then behave as though he knew nothing about it.

  But a hundred and seventy marks! It was out of the question. Quite simply out of the question.

  However, you don’t say goodbye to your dreams as easily as that. Pinneberg didn’t feel up to just going along home with his hundred and seventy marks. He would have to be cheerful when he arrived. Lammchen had been reckoning on two hundred and fifty. He started in the direction of Frankfurter Allee. To say goodbye. And then never go to the window again. There was no point in it. For people like them a dressing-table was out of the question, all they might be able to stretch to was a pair of iron bedsteads.

  He arrived at the shop window with the bedroom-suite in it, and there, to one side, stood the dressing-table. It had a rectangular mirror with a delicate greenish hue in a brown frame. The dressing-table itself was rectangular, too, with a set of drawers to right and left. It was really rather mysterious how one could fall in love with a thing like that when there were thousands of others like it or almost like it, but this was the one, the only one.

  Pinneberg looked at it, at length. He stepped back, then forward; it was just as beautiful either way. The mirror was a good one too. It would be lovely to see Lammchen sitting in front of it in the morning in her red and white bathrobe … It would have been lovely.

  Pinneberg sighed sorrowfully and turned away. Nothing. Nothing. Not for you and people like you. Other people manage it, goodness knows how, but not you. Go home, little man, and fritter away your money on whatever you like—and can afford—but not on things like that.

  At the next street corner he looked back once more. Himmlisch’s shop-window gleamed as heavenly as its name. He could still make out the dressing-table.

  He did a sudden about-turn. Without hesitation, without giving the piece of furniture another glance, he quick-marched up to the shop door …

  And while he was doing it, a great deal went through his head.

  ‘What does it matter in the end?’

  And: ‘You’ve got to start somewhere. Why should we always have nothing?’

  Then quite determinedly: ‘I want it and I’m going to do it. Just once in my life I want to have been like that, and hang the consequences.’ A little bit further down the line, and that is the mood in which a man steals, fights and kills. And it was in this mood that Pinneberg bought a dressing-table. To him it was all the same.

  ‘May I help you, sir?’ asked the elderly salesman, a dark man with a few streaks of hair plastered over his skull like anchovies on a plate.

  ‘You’ve got a bedroom-suite in the window,’ barked Pinneberg, seething with anger. He sounded very aggressive. ‘Caucasian walnut.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said the salesman. ‘Seven hundred and ninety-five. A bargain. The last of a series. We can’t produce them at that price any more. If we were to do it again, it would cost at least eleven hundred.’

  ‘How come?’ asked Pinneberg scornfully. ‘Wages keep on falling.’

  ‘Taxes, sir. And import duty. Can you imagine the import duty you pay on Caucasian walnut! It’s tripled in the last three months.’

  ‘For something that’s so cheap, it’s been standing a long time in your shop window.’

  ‘Money,’ said the salesman. ‘Who’s got money today, sir?’ He laughed mournfully. ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Nor have I,’ said Pinneberg brutally. ‘And I don’t want to buy the bedroom-suite. I’ll never get so much money together in my whole life. I want to buy the dressing-table.’

  ‘A dressing-table? If you’d just like to step upstairs. The single items of furniture are on the first floor.’

  ‘That one!’ shouted Pinneberg, pointing indignantly. ‘I want to buy that dressing-table.’

  ‘The one in the set? Out of the bedroom-suite?’ said the salesman, as the penny gradually began to drop. ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but we can’t sell off individual items out of the set. Because then we couldn’t sell the suite. But we do have some very nice dressing-tables.’

  Pinneberg made as if to leave.

  ‘Almost exactly the same,’ said the salesman hurriedly. ‘If you’d like to take a look at them, just a look.’

  Pinneberg snorted. He glanced around. ‘This is a furniture factory, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes?’ said the salesman nervously.

  ‘So,’ said Pinneberg. ‘If you’ve got a factory, why don’t you make another dressing-table like it? I want that one, understand. So make a copy. Or don’t sell it to me, I don’t mind. There are lots of other shops where you get decent service.’

  And while Pinneberg was saying all that, and getting more and more worked up, he was inwardly aware of being a swine, that he was behaving as badly as his worst customers. That he was treating the confused and anxious old gentleman atrociously. But he could not help it, he was in a rage against the world, and everyone in it. It was the elderly salesman’s misfortune that he was the only one available on whom Pinneberg could vent his wrath.

  ‘One moment please,’ stammered the old man. ‘I’ll ask the manager.’

  He vanished and Pinneberg stared after him with sorrow and scorn. ‘Why am I being like this?’ he thought. ‘I ought to have brought Lammchen along, Lammchen is never like this.’

  ‘Why is she never like that?’ he reflected. ‘Things aren’t easy for her either.’

  The salesman came back. ‘You can have the dressing-table,’ he said briefly. His tone had changed considerably. ‘The price will be a hundred and twenty-five marks.’

  Pinneberg thought: ‘A hundred and twenty-five! That’s crazy. These fellows here are having me on. The whole suite only costs seven hundred and ninety-five.’

  ‘I think that’s too expensive,’ he said.<
br />
  ‘It’s not expensive at all,’ said the salesman. ‘A first-class crystal mirror like that costs fifty marks on its own.’

  ‘And what would it be if I paid by instalments …?’

  Now money had reared its head, the wind had all gone out of Pinneberg’s sails. He had become very small and the salesman very large.

  ‘Instalments are not possible in this case,’ said the salesman in a superior tone, looking Pinneberg up and down. ‘It was only done as a favour, in the expectation that later on you would patronise …’

  ‘I can’t go back now,’ thought Pinneberg desperately. ‘I came on so important. If I hadn’t done, I could go back. It’s crazy. What will Lammchen say?’

  And aloud he said. ‘Right, I’ll take the dressing-table. But you must send it to my house today.’

  ‘Today? It’s too late to do that. The staff are off in quarter of an hour.’

  ‘I can still go back,’ said something inside Pinneberg’s head. ‘I could go back, if I hadn’t made such a fuss.’

  ‘It has to be today,’ he persisted. ‘It’s a present. Any later and it would be pointless.’

  And as he said it he reflected that Heilbutt was coming, and it would be fine for his friend to see what a present he was giving his wife.

  ‘Just a moment, please,’ said the salesman and vanished again.

  ‘The best that could happen,’ thought Pinneberg, ‘would be if he said that it was too late to do it today, and then I could say I was sorry but it would be no good. I must be ready to leave the shop quickly.’ And he positioned himself near the door.

  ‘The manager says he will lend you a handcart and the apprentice. You will have to give the apprentice a tip because it’s after working hours.’

  ‘Well …’ said Pinneberg, hesitating.

  ‘It’s not heavy,’ said the salesman comfortingly. ‘If you push a bit from behind, the apprentice will be able to pull it. And be careful with the mirror. We’ll wrap it in a cloth …’

  ‘All right, done,’ said Pinneberg. ‘A hundred and twenty-five marks.’

  LAMMCHEN HAS A VISITOR AND LOOKS AT HERSELF IN THE MIRROR. NO ONE MENTIONS MONEY ALL EVENING