Little Man, What Now?

by Hans Fallada

  Then he said: ‘Please do, Lammchen. Of course.’ And turned onto his side.

  This was the fourth or fifth time in their marriage that Lammchen had made such a request to her husband. And it did not constitute a hidden invitation to love-making on Lammchen’s part. Although love-making was usually what resulted, due to Pinneberg’s rather obvious, down-to-earth and typically male interpretation of the request.

  For Lammchen it was actually a continuation of the goodnight kiss, a need to cuddle up to him, a longing for tenderness. Lammchen only wanted to hold her young man for a while in her arms. There was a wild, wide, noisy and hostile world out there, which knew nothing of them and cared less. It was so good to lie one against the other, like a little warm island!

  And so they lay now, in each other’s arms, face to face, a small warm patch in the middle of thousands of miles of darkness—and you had to lie very close when there was only one of those modern four-foot-square eiderdowns to cover the two of you, otherwise draughts got in on every side.

  At first, there was something strange about the warmth of each other’s bodies, but that was soon gone, and they were one. And now it was he who pressed himself closer and closer to her.

  ‘Sonny,’ said Lammchen, ‘My Sonny, my only …’

  ‘You, you. Oh, Lammchen …’

  He kissed her, but it wasn’t duty kisses any more. Oh, how good it was now to kiss that mouth that seemed to bloom under his lips, and become ever softer and fuller and riper …

  But suddenly Pinneberg stopped kissing, and he even put a distance between his body and hers, so that only their shoulders touched.

  ‘Lammchen,’ he said, with great honesty. ‘I have been a frightful idiot.’

  ‘Have you?’ she said, and thought for a while before she said: ‘What did the dressing-table cost then? But you needn’t talk about it if you don’t want to. It’s all right. You wanted to please me.’

  ‘You sweet girl!’ he said. And suddenly they were together again. But then he made up his mind, and the gap was there again, and he said ‘It cost a hundred and twenty-five marks.’

  Silence.

  Lammchen said nothing.

  ‘It does sound a bit much,’ he said very apologetically, ‘but you must bear in mind that the mirror alone cost at least fifty marks.’

  ‘True,’ said Lammchen. ‘The mirror is a good one. It’s rather beyond our means, and we aren’t really going to need a dressing-table in the next five or ten years, but it was I who put the idea into your head. And it is nice to have it. And you are a kind old, silly old chap. But you mustn’t be cross if I go around in my shabby old blue winter coat for another year, because we have to look after the Shrimp first …’

  ‘You’re so kind,’ he said, and the kissing began anew. They were pressed very close, and the explanation might well have got no further that evening. But suddenly a veritable tornado of sounds burst from the Berlin-style living-room next door: laughter, shouts and screams, a male voice speaking very fast, and above it all the complaining peevish tones of Mrs Mia Pinneberg.

  ‘They’re three-quarters gone already,’ said Pinneberg, very much disturbed.

  ‘Mama isn’t in a very good mood,’ remarked Lammchen.

  ‘Mama is always quarrelsome when she’s drunk,’ he said.

  ‘Can’t you give her the rent, at least something?’ asked Lammchen.

  ‘All I have,’ said Pinneberg resolutely, ‘is forty-two marks.’

  ‘What?!!!’ asked Lammchen, sitting up. Relinquishing the cosy amorous stuffiness under the bedclothes, she sat up straight as an arrow. ‘What have you got left from your wages?’

  ‘Forty-two marks,’ said Pinneberg in a very small voice. ‘Listen to me, Lammchen.’ But Lammchen wasn’t listening. This time the shock was too great. ‘Forty-two,’ she whispered, as she reckoned. ‘One hundred and twenty-five. So you got a hundred and sixty-seven marks salary? That’s not possible!’

  ‘A hundred and seventy. I gave three marks to the boy.’ Lammchen stumbled over those three marks: ‘Which boy? Why?’

  ‘You know. The apprentice.’

  ‘Oh yes. A hundred and seventy. And you go and buy …? Oh God, what will happen now, what shall we live on?’

  ‘Lammchen,’ he pleaded. ‘I know. I was so stupid. But it will never, never happen again. And we are going to get maternity benefit.’

  ‘And that’ll soon be gone if we handle it this way. And there’s the Shrimp. We have to buy things for him. You may not mind if he goes around in rags. I do. I don’t care how rough we live, we can take it, but the Shrimp’s not going to have a hard time, not for his first five or six years, not if I can help it. And then you go and do a thing like that.’

  Pinneberg sat up too. Lammchen’s voice was so changed, she was talking as though he, her Sonny, had ceased to exist, as though he was just anybody. And even if most of the time he was just a junior salesman, with the early-inculcated sense that he was nothing special, a little animal that you could let live or die, it really didn’t matter, someone who—even in his moments of deepest love for Lammchen—felt transient, impermanent, not worth making any trouble over; this time, at this moment, he was very definitely there. He, Johannes Pinneberg, knew that what was at stake here was the only thing that gave his life worth and meaning. He had to hold onto that. He had to fight for that; no one was going to do him out of that.

  And he said: ‘Lammchen, my darling Lammchen. I said I’d been an idiot. I did everything all wrong. But that’s how I am. And you mustn’t speak to me that way, because I was always like that. You have to stick with me, and speak to me like your Sonny and not just someone to quarrel with …’

  ‘Sonny, love, I …’

  But he went on talking, this was his hour, and everything had been leading up to this from the very beginning. He wasn’t going to give way, so he kept on speaking: ‘Lammchen, you must really forgive me. You know, right from the bottom of your heart, so that you don’t think about it any more, so that you can laugh about your silly husband when you see the dressing-table.’

  ‘Sonny, my darling Sonny …’

  ‘No!’ he said, and sprang out of bed. ‘Now I must put the light on. I have to see your face, and see how you look when you really forgive me, so that I know later …’

  And the light went on, and he hurried back to her but didn’t get into bed. He bent over her, and looked at her …

  Their two faces were hot, flushed, their eyes very wide. Their hair mingled, their lips touched, in the open front of her nightdress her white breasts were so wonderfully firm, with their bluish veins …

  ‘How lucky I am,’ he felt. ‘Oh what happiness …’

  ‘Oh my Sonny,’ she thought. ‘My Sonny, my big, foolish, beloved Sonny, to think I’ve got you inside me, in my womb …’

  And suddenly her face became radiant, brighter and brighter as he looked at her, it seemed to grow, as though the sun was rising over the landscape of that face.

  ‘Lammchen!’ he called to her, beckoning her, as she receded ever further from him into her bliss, ‘Lammchen!’

  And she took his hand, and placed it against her belly: ‘There, feel, the Shrimp’s just moved, he was knocking … Can you feel it? He’s done it again.’

  He heard nothing at all, but borne along by her maternal joy, he bent over her. He gently laid his cheek on her full, taut belly, which was yet so soft … And suddenly it felt like the most wonderful cushion in the world. No, that was stupid, it was like a wave. Her belly rose and fell, an immeasurable sea of happiness flowed over him … was it summer? It must be, the corn was ripe. What a happy child, with ash-blond tousled hair, and his mother’s blue eyes. What a good smell there was here in the field: earth, mother, love. Love, enjoyed so many times but always fresh … The prickly ears of wheat tickled his cheeks, and beyond he saw the beautiful inward sweep of her thighs and the little dark wood … And moving up as though her arms had lifted him, he rested on her motherly breast, seeing her ey
es so wide and so beaming … Oh! all you people in small, cramped rooms, that’s one thing they can’t take away from you …

  ‘Everything is all right,’ whispered Lammchen. ‘It’s all, all right, my Sonny.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, slipping swiftly in beside her and bending his face over hers. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life. Lammchen, my love …’

  Around midnight a bony finger rapped at the door.

  ‘May I come in?’ asked a voice.

  ‘Come in, Mama,’ said Pinneberg proudly. ‘You’re not disturbing us.’

  He gripped Lammchen’s shoulder to prevent her from slipping modestly over to her side of the bed.

  Mrs Mia Pinneberg came slowly in and surveyed the scene.

  ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you. I saw the light was still on. But of course I didn’t think you were already in bed. Are you sure I’m not disturbing you?’ And with that she sat down.

  ‘Of course you aren’t. We don’t mind a bit. Anyway we’re married.’

  Mrs Mia Pinneberg sat there breathing heavily. Despite her facepaint, she was visibly flushed. No doubt she had drunk a little too much.

  ‘Good Lord!’ murmured Mrs Pinneberg, causing Pinneberg to reflect that Lammchen’s nighties were excessively revealing, ‘what a bosom she’s got. You don’t see it in the daytime. You’re not expecting, are you?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Pinneberg, bestowing an expert glance on the cleavage. ‘She’s always had that; ever since she was a little girl.’

  ‘Sonny!’ said Lammchen warningly.

  ‘You see what it’s like, Emma,’ said Mrs Pinneberg with tearful indignation. ‘Your husband’s making fun of me. And that lot over there do it too. I’m going to be away for at least five minutes now, and I am the hostess, but do you think one of them is going to ask after me? They’re all after those silly cows Claire and Nina. And Holger has changed altogether these last few weeks. No one bothers about me.’

  She gave a slight sob.

  ‘Oh Mama!’ said Lammchen, rather embarrassed. She felt sorry for her, and would like to have got out of bed to go to her, but her young man held her fast.

  ‘Leave her alone, Lammchen,’ he said pitilessly. ‘You’ve had one too many, Mama. Never mind, you’ll soon get over that.’

  ‘It’s always the same thing when she’s had one too many,’ he explained, quite unmoved. ‘First she cries, then she starts an argument, then she cries again. I’ve seen it ever since I was a schoolboy.’

  ‘Please, Sonny, don’t be like that,’ whispered Lammchen. ‘You shouldn’t …’

  And Mrs Pinneberg said: ‘You just try harking back to your schooldays! I could tell your wife how the policeman came about the indecent games you’d been having with the girls in the sand-pit …’

  ‘Go ahead!’ said Pinneberg. ‘My wife knows all about it. We’re coming up to the quarrel, you see, Lammchen. Now she’s going to start.’

  ‘I won’t hear any more of this,’ said Lammchen with flaming cheeks. ‘We’ve all got things to be ashamed of as I know only too well. Nobody protected me either. But that’s no way for a son to speak to his mother.’

  ‘Calm down,’ said Pinneberg. ‘It’s not me who drags up these nasty stories. It’s Mama.’

  ‘And what about my rent?’ asked Mrs Pinneberg in a sudden rage, as she got onto what was really on her mind. ‘Today is the thirty-first, everywhere else you’d have had to pay in advance, and I haven’t had a penny.’

  ‘You’ll get it,’ said Pinneberg, ‘not today or tomorrow, but you will get it. Sometime.’

  ‘I must have it today. I’ve got to pay for the wine. Nobody thinks of where I’m to get my money from.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Mama. You don’t have to pay for the wine tonight. You’re just talking. And kindly remember that Lammchen does all your work for you.’

  ‘I want my money,’ said Mrs Pinneberg, exhausted. ‘I’m sure Lammchen doesn’t mind doing me the odd little favour. I made the tea for you today, and am I asking to be paid for that?’

  ‘You’re off your head, Mama,’ said Pinneberg. ‘What’s the comparison between clearing up the whole flat every day and brewing a cup of tea?’

  ‘There’s no difference,’ said Mrs Pinneberg. ‘A favour’s a favour.’ Looking very pale, she rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ she whispered, and staggered out.

  ‘Now, let’s put the light out quick,’ said Pinneberg. ‘It’s a damn nuisance that we can’t lock the door. Nothing works in this pigsty.’ He cuddled up to her again. ‘Oh Lammchen, if only the old woman hadn’t come in just when we’d got going so beautifully.’

  ‘I can’t bear it,’ whispered Lammchen, and he could feel that her whole body was trembling. ‘I can’t bear to hear you speak to Mama like that. She is your mother, Sonny love.’

  ‘More’s the pity,’ said her young man, unmoved. ‘More’s the pity. And it’s because I know her so well, that I know what a cow she is. You’re still taken in by her, Lammchen, because in the daytime, when she’s sober, she’s witty. She makes jokes and understands a joke. But that’s all cunning. She doesn’t like anybody really. And how long d’you think things will stay happy with Jachmann? He’ll get wise and realize she’s just using him. And she’ll soon be too old to be just a bed-partner.’

  ‘Sonny,’ she said, very seriously. ‘I never want to hear you speak like that about Mama again. You may be right, and I may be just a sentimental household drudge, but I don’t want to hear it ever again. It makes me think the Shrimp might talk about me that way one day.’

  ‘About you?’ queried Pinneberg, and his tone said it all. ‘The Shrimp might talk that way about you? But you’re you! You’re Lammchen! You’re … Oh, God damn it, there she is at the door again. We’re sleeping now, Mama!’

  ‘Kids!’ said a voice, which, very surprisingly, was Jachmann’s. He too was tipsy. ‘Kids, pardon me a minute.’

  ‘We certainly will,’ said Pinneberg. ‘Just get out, Mr Jachmann.’

  ‘Only a minute, young lady, and I’m going. You’re married and we’re married. Not officially, but otherwise genuinely, including the rows … shouldn’t we help each other?’

  ‘Out!’ was all Pinneberg replied.

  ‘You’re a charming woman,’ said Jachmann, and sat down heavily on the bed.

  ‘I’m afraid this is me,’ said Pinneberg.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Jachmann. ‘I know my way here, I’ll simply go round the bed.’

  ‘You’re meant to be going out,’ protested Pinneberg somewhat helplessly.

  ‘And I will,’ said Jachmann, looking for the narrow passage between the wash-stand and the cupboard. ‘I’ve only come about the rent.’

  ‘Oh God!’ sighed the Pinnebergs together.

  ‘Is that you, young lady?’ boomed Jachmann ‘Oh, do put on the light. Say “Oh God” again.’ He made his way towards the bed by the window, struggling through the pitfalls with which the room was littered.

  ‘You know your mother’s been grousing non-stop because she hasn’t had her rent. Tonight she messed up the whole evening for us. And now she’s in there crying. So I thought to myself: Jachmann, you’ve been earning good money recently. You’d have given it to your old lady anyway, so why not give it to the kids. They’ll give it to her, so it’ll come to the same thing. And then we’ll have peace.’

  ‘No, Mr Jachmann, that’s too kind of you,’ began Pinneberg.

  ‘Kind … Oh damnation, whatever’s this here? Oh, it’s a new bit of furniture! A mirror! Well, I need my peace and quiet. Come here, young lady, here’s the money.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Jachmann,’ said Pinneberg merrily. ‘I’m afraid you went round the houses for nothing. That bed’s empty. My wife is with me.’

  ‘Dammit,’ muttered the giant, as a lachrymose voice arose outside: ‘Holger, where are you, Holger?’

  ‘Quick, hide, she’s coming in!’ whispered Pinneberg.
>
  Crash, bang, and the door opened. ‘Is Jachmann in here?’ Mrs Pinneberg put the light on. Two pairs of eyes looked rather anxiously around, but he wasn’t there. Doubtless he was hiding behind the other bed.

  ‘Where can he have got to this time? He sometimes rushes out onto the street just because he’s too hot … Oh!’

  Pinneberg and Lammchen followed Mama’s glance in dismay. But it wasn’t Holger that she had discovered, but some banknotes, lying loose on Lammchen’s red silk padded quilt.

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ said Lammchen, who was the calmer of the two. ‘We’ve just been talking it over. That’s the rent for the next few weeks. Please take it.’

  Mrs Mia Pinneberg took the money. ‘Three hundred marks,’ she gasped. ‘Well, I’m glad you changed your minds. That’ll do for October and November, and then there’ll be a small amount for the gas and the electric light. We’ll work that out some other time. Well that’s that … thank you … good night.’ She had talked herself out of the door, anxiously guarding her treasure.

  Jachmann’s beaming face emerged from behind the other bed. ‘What a woman!’ he said. ‘What a woman! Three hundred marks for October and November: she’s done very nicely thank you. Well, excuse me, kids, now I must go to her. First I’m very curious to see whether she mentions the money. And second she’ll be very worked up, so good night.’

  And out he went, too.

  KESSLER REVEALS ALL AND GETS A BOX ON THE EARS. THE PINNEBERGS STILL HAVE TO MOVE OUT

  It was morning, a dreary grey November morning, all was still very quiet at Mandels. Pinneberg had just arrived. He was the first, or almost the first, in the department. Someone seemed to be doing something round the back.

  Pinneberg was out of sorts, oppressed, it must be the weather. He took a roll of Melton cloth and began measuring it. Rumm—rumm—rumm.

  The person round the back rustled nearer, not directly towards him as Heilbutt would do, but stopping here and there. It must be Kessler, and Kessler must have something to say to him; one of his eternal pinpricks, his cowardly little attacks. Unfortunately, they annoyed Pinneberg afresh every time: he got really wild, so angry he would have liked to wallop Kessler. It had been going on ever since he had made the remark about him having been brought in by Lehmann.