Tales from the Underworld

by Hans Fallada

  He has asked the widow Muthesius politely, he has written to her, he has gone to the police about her, or rather her old tom-cat, Peter, nothing did any good; and now he’s standing and shivering behind a battery of eight missiles, perhaps he should buy a small revolver …

  Well, the sparrows are twittering, the starlings are all over the cherry tree, he would like to scare them off, but if he did that, maybe the cat would take fright. At six the maid Rosa starts to stir in her room, she mustn’t find him here like this, and he’s just going up when something dappled hurries through the garden: Peter. He charges out of the back door with angry cries, he despatches his potatoes, two gardens away old Muthesius can be heard telling her schoolteacher daughter: ‘And he claims to be a civilized human being!’ Herr Einenkel withdraws, he can’t even remonstrate; if he thinks about it properly it wasn’t an insult, it was a failure pure and simple – this is going to be one of those days.

  An hour later, and Ruthie anyway is having a whale of a time. Her parents are seated at two sides of the breakfast table, at the third is Gerda, and Pappi is trying to learn from Gerda what her French homework was. But on the fourth side of the table, on the settle, stands Ruthie, her mug of milk in front of her and a roll in her hand. ‘Now eat up, Ruthie,’ says Einenkel.

  ‘Pappi – you,’ says the little creature, and holds the roll in his direction.

  ‘No, Ruthie, you must eat it.’

  ‘Pappi – you!’

  Einenkel gives in and takes a bite. The sun is streaming through the windows, the lace curtains are still white from their recent spring-cleaning. Ruthie is a little bundle of joy; it seems that Gerda has prepared herself thoroughly for school. Light skitters in the golden tea, and pings little reflections on the ceiling. Everything’s right, we did the right thing when we left the Bleibtreustraße flat, even if the house is a drain on our finances … But in another two years we’ll be over the worst, and then maybe we can think of buying a small car on the never-never, admittedly we’ll first have to build a garage for it, with a proper laundry room, but there’s always something else to take care of first.

  ‘Will you leave me a little money, Franz?’ asks Frau Einenkel sweetly.

  He makes a movement. And: ‘Off to school, Gerda, it’s time!’ And calls out: ‘Rosa, Rosa, will you take the little one to her sandbox!’

  ‘But Ruthie hasn’t eaten her breakfast yet!’

  ‘She needs to learn to do things at the proper time, then. Goddamnit, she can’t spend two hours over breakfast every day! Why are you out of money again? It’s the twenty-second for Christ’s sake!’

  Talk, argy-bargy, back and forth. Finally he gives her twenty marks. ‘But mind that lasts you!’ Of course it won’t, this is how it’s been for twelve years. She simply will not get it. Lotte doesn’t get it. Two Sundays with five visitors are enough to knock her budget for six. No forward planning. ‘Imagine if I ran my summer ulsters the way you do your housekeeping …’

  She lets him talk, she says ‘Yes.’ Of course she’s not listening, he knows her face well enough to tell she’s thinking about some frippery like a tablecloth, when she already has three or four.

  Suddenly something occurs to him. Rather magnificently, he says: ‘Perhaps the grey lined summer coats will be in. I tell you, Lotte, Berlin hasn’t seen the like! That’ll be a coup! At twenty-three fifty they’ll walk out of the shop!’

  He beams, he is ecstatic, he describes the material and the cut. Suddenly his mien darkens. ‘So long as Herr Krebs doesn’t make trouble! He’s rumoured to want to slap twenty-five per cent warehousing on each item. Then the coats would be priced at over twenty-five. And it’s so important nowadays to have them under, where no one’s got any money!’

  Finally, getting up: ‘Well, I’d better catch my train. Give Ruthie a kiss from her Papa. And don’t spend those twenty marks right away! Bye!’

  As is his custom, he falls into a gentle jog-trot as soon as the door is closed behind him. From No. 17, Herr Wrede falls in with him. ‘Morning!’

  ‘Good morning to you! King of a day, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, splendid!’

  ‘But we’ll have to sprinkle again today, is your water bill as high as ours?’

  ‘No, my wife is a little miracle-worker. She always uses the bathwater to soak the clothes in.’

  Herr Einenkel is a little put out. ‘My wife is very clever as well. She’ll make you lunch from leftovers: absolutely delicious!’

  ‘There’s never anything left over in our household!’

  Neither knows how much the other makes, though each believes it’s less than himself.

  ‘I’m thinking of acquiring an automobile. Nothing swanky, just a nice little runabout.’

  ‘Oh, you’re not! What are you going to do for a garage? You’ve just got a little handkerchief garden anyway!’

  Then a sudden cry from Herr Wrede: ‘Oh, Herr Einenkel, I knew there was something I had to tell you! The Dingeldeys are having to leave, they’ve missed three payments.’

  ‘You don’t say! But I always said it was bound to happen!’

  ‘They over-extended themselves: vacuum cleaner, carpets, furniture, and they left themselves no money for the house, naïve isn’t the word for it!’

  The Dingeldeys keep them busy halfway to the city. Other gentlemen have joined them in the compartment, gentlemen who did not reside in ‘Waldheim’ as they did, but these gentlemen join in the conversation anyway, that Dingeldey must be a strange fellow, totally unreliable, on a perfectly ordinary workday he just goes out for a walk, it’s not a holiday and he stays at home, ‘don’t feel like it today,’ I mean, I ask you!

  ‘That’s what our republic is lacking these days: a sense of duty!’

  ‘That’s absolutely right, Herr Einenkel, if everyone chipped in …’

  ‘Why, then we wouldn’t have any unemployment!’

  ‘You know, we had a broken window, you couldn’t see it from the front, we could have left it, no probs. But I tell my wife anyway: have someone come and fix it, I’ll manage, I want everyone to have work …’

  ‘Would one of you gentlemen have a light?’

  Deathly silence.

  Then Herr Einenkel sacrifices his cigar: ‘Please, Fräulein!’

  In this second-class compartment (you need to have a season ticket to travel second, everyone of any standing in the settlement travels second-class) – in this second-class compartment a girl travelled unnoticed among five men, the daily commuters ignored her in their conversation: the Dingeldeys, work creation schemes …

  Now she’s sitting there, smoking. Very nicely dressed, looks like a million dollars – now, if one were in constant company of something like that, those feet, a flash of leg like that can drive a man insane …

  ‘Have you been to the theatre at all lately?’

  ‘You were going on holiday too, weren’t you? There’s nothing like the sea, the proper sea. To me it’s become a sort of annual necessity …’

  ‘In Friedrichstraße I saw an original oil painting, it must have been twenty square feet, it was first-rate, and not even all that pricey!’

  The girl sits there, smoking. She looks out of the window at the countryside flashing past, sun, shade, fields, green trees …

  The gentlemen talk slowly and pompously, they avoid the word ‘beauty’, they’re not even thinking about it, but they have a different range of conversational topics than before. The girl smokes, once upon a time, I was young and hopeful … I remember reading a book … it was quite inspiring …‘I’ll be damned if I don’t go to the cinema later this week! A man shouldn’t let himself grow rusty.’

  At half past eight on the dot, Herr Einenkel strides into the menswear department of Haarklein & Co. He’s not the type to go sniffing round the whole department to check whether his sales staff of five and the three trainees are all present. He goes over to his desk and gets out the order books and does some sums, and in between times he looks around. Of course, He
ller takes care to walk past his desk, do a little bow and bid him a good morning. That’s really not called for, Heller is and remains a poor salesman, even though Einenkel isn’t averse to the odd bit of buttering-up. The trainees are giving the whole department a little brush-up, everything’s in order, just Mamlock—

  ‘Now, Herr Mamlock,’ says Herr Einenkel perfectly pleasantly at eight fifty-five, ‘I’m getting a little fed up with your lack of punctuality. If you can’t manage to keep time …’

  Mamlock simply looks at Herr Einenkel. Who, with a little more feeling, continues: ‘It’s irresponsible of you! You must have some decency in your bones! Eight fifty-five is not the same as eight-thirty! I don’t know what goes on in that head of yours!’

  Mamlock doesn’t appear to be thinking at all, he is simply looking. With bitterness, Einenkel thinks of the instalment payments on his house, which have to be punctual to the minute. ‘You are sloppy!’ he shouts. ‘In a word, I will suggest your dismissal to Herr Liepmann! I cannot and will not work with people like you!’

  Mamlock hasn’t said a word. Mamlock has gone down into the stock room. If he’s banking on being the best salesman on my staff—! Herr Einenkel tosses the books this way and that impetuously. How can he be expected to do his sums! In these times, when everything’s so sticky, Mamlock’s drawing two hundred and ten marks, but has he ever stopped to think how many sales he needs to make to justify that sort of salary! Who buys … Turnover is way down!

  And suddenly Herr Einenkel is smiling, he has it on good authority that his department is outperforming all the others at Haarklein. Now bring on the grey ulsters! That’s his coup, the bit of luck he’s missed of late, he’s going to be selling them hand over fist! Oh dear, oh dear, so long as the manufacturer’s stock matches the original design!

  He’s standing behind his desk, smiling, dreaming of sales reports that will floor Herr Krebs. Herr Haarklein, Haarklein the great, will come and tell him in person: ‘You’ve really got your section in order, Einenkel, your section is doing first-class work!’

  And while he’s daydreaming like this, the usual morning expectation comes over him, a light, not disagreeable tingling in his spine. Nine-thirteen; at this time yesterday, the first customer was already making a purchase. And then the quiet fear: what if no one comes before ten, eleven, twelve?

  ‘It can’t be made up,’ he mutters to himself, even as the first customer shows up. Hesse’s onto him. Good. Hesse won’t let anyone down, Hesse’s the man. And the next customer. And the next. The place is filling up, all his sellers are engaged, are selling, no flops yet, no customer’s walked out, so far, no: ‘I’ll go home and think about it.’

  Herr Einenkel is everywhere, he takes on the hard cases himself, intervenes with a mild reproach: ‘But Herr Heller, you should show the gentleman our tracksuits! We have all the latest models!’

  And: ‘That coat suits you so well! Really dazzling! Wouldn’t you say, Herr Mamlock?’

  And he’s off to the till, six hundred and ten taken in already, that’s quite outstanding for half past eleven. Oh, happiness! People come, you sell them something, a few make difficulties. Why does that portly gentleman insist on a jacket with angled pockets? ‘But of course we’ll adjust it for you, sir. I completely understand’ (absurd) – and he’s with Mamlock again, saying almost casually: ‘Well, no need to worry just yet, Mamlock, but a little more punctuality wouldn’t hurt, eh?’

  ‘Herr Einenkel to see Herr Krebs, please!’

  Oh my God, the coats are in, the grey coats. Krebs will get an earful from me if he prices them at a penny over twenty-five marks, Einenkel will make such a fuss, he’s prepared to take it all the way up to Haarklein …

  But it turned out there was nothing to fuss about. You see, Frau Krebs still isn’t feeling any better, how unfortunate, Herr Einenkel is terribly sorry, perhaps they would both like to come out and visit him sometime, his own wife would be only too glad to see them, they have a place in the country, and the air is so healthy …

  ‘Of course I see, my dear Herr Krebs, I understand, of course I do, but a ready reckoner like you who understands his business absolutely … Tied by directives from above? But Herr Krebs, that can’t be! Not a man like you! You can do what you please …’

  Herr Einenkel softens him up for fully an hour, then he goes. The coats will arrive in the menswear section tomorrow, splendid coats, exactly the cut of the prototype, and – they’re going on sale at twenty-four ninety! They will take out advertisements, he can imagine everyone, all his customers, their rooms, the whole city – they see the ads, they come and they buy. If he could sing – if he could sing at work – then he would sing now. His wife Lotte does when sometimes, after a spring rain, the sweet peas open, row upon row of them, all pale green; each time something does its stuff, she bursts into song. Einenkel doesn’t have a word for it, nor does he waste much time trying to think of one; the word is happiness. Three hundred grey ulsters at twenty-four ninety: that’s happiness. Woe is the instalments on the house and the blasted cat, but this here is happiness!

  But of course it’s not possible to be gone for an hour, and everything in the menswear section stay the way it’s meant to be. Between the clothes-stands Herr Einenkel runs into a pale, spotty youth – ‘I’ve been standing around for an hour! Do you employ any sales assistants at all! No, thanks, I’ve had enough. I imagine you just do as you please here …’

  The youth has a tantrum, Herr Einenkel handles him in person, but it remains a blank: spotty face refuses to calm down. Afterwards, once he’s left, having bought nothing, Herr Einenkel has a wobbly himself, it’s the quiet time of lunch, no customers are in sight, he can afford to have a little shout. Mamlock, Hesse, Heller, Ziebarth, Zeddies and the trainees, every man jack of them, all get an earful, and how! Herr Einenkel runs up and down, dripping with sweat, he’s red-faced, roaring, not even the shelving has been properly dusted, and then he goes for his lunch.

  The section-leaders have got their own table in the canteen, it came about sort of by accident. Sure, there are some real sh-1-ts among them, but of course it would undermine their authority if they were to sit with the sales personnel.

  Thanks be to God that in spite of his most enjoyable rant, which if the day and the heavens had seen fit would have gone on for ever and ever, he still collars the good seat with the view of the salesgirls’ table. And there she is again, the charming, delicate little wagtail of a thing from ladies’ hats. Shyly Herr Einenkel looks at her three or four times. He has to have those looks; the success or failure of a day depends sheerly on whether they come off, or whether he’s got his back to her. It is not related whether Fräulein Bild knows of Herr Einenkel’s existence or not; certainly she doesn’t know what part she has to play in his dreams.

  Oh, if he’d only run into that little brunette, say, fifteen years ago! Lotte’s not so bad, but Lotte’s the day-to-day. If he could unobtrusively get hold of her address, he would send her a fabulous bouquet tomorrow, roses or lilacs, anonymously, of course, just to perk her up.

  And he hears himself saying: ‘Yes, I had a bit of a rant – you probably heard it. You need to take those salespeople down every so often, they get so full of themselves! Tell me, gents, didn’t we ever have to work when we were young?’

  And now we get all those stories of olden days, before salespeople were given Sundays off: those Sundays when you were forever having to pull the blinds up and down, adjust the awnings, switch the window display lighting off and on.

  ‘I had a boss in Rogasen …’

  And: ‘Do you remember Lehmann? We all used to call him “loco Lehmann”, for a while he was on the road for Hübsch & Niedlich?’

  It’s four-fifteen before Herr Einenkel is back in his section. He’s missed nothing, though, the sheen of the day is gone, it’s a long, dreary, disappointing afternoon with four failures and a tiny take. Herr Einenkel stands behind his desk. First he took a hand and drove on, now he stands there looking pale and
sad, he’ll be left with seventy-three trench coats on his books, and then what? He’s a bad manager, it’s mean of him to have a go at the staff, he’s no better than anyone …

  He sighs deeply and passes slowly up and down between the rows of clothes, he won’t be home till quarter to nine, Ruthie will be asleep, Gerda probably as well. Lotte says the birds are singing so beautifully in the garden at the moment, by the time he comes it’s dark and they’re all quiet.

  At one stand he sees Krieblich the trainee, a timid, apprehensive lad. (‘That boy will never make a salesman, he’s got no balls!’) Now he’s pale as a sheet, holding onto a couple of coats, reeling.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Krieblich, what’s the matter?’

  The boy is incapable of an answer, or else he’s frightened again. He would even have fallen over, perhaps taking the clothes-stand with him, if Einenkel hadn’t supported him. ‘Easy, boy, easy, you must be ill … Mamlock, will you take over the section, I’m taking Krieblich to the infirmary …’

  Oh, what a good father has become of stern, irascible Herr Einenkel! ‘Come along, lad, just hold onto me. Two more steps. Come on, it’s getting better, and you’ll be able to have a nice lie-down when we get there.’

  The examination isn’t complicated: the cause is undernourishment. To put it simply, the boy is faint with hunger. They don’t get anything to eat, they’re work-experience, and the lad earns basically nothing.

  An agitated Herr Einenkel runs back and forth. ‘Not to have enough to eat! That’s not on, something is going to have to be done about that. Just hang in there, Krieblich, lad …’

  Herr Einenkel takes the trainee home, he pays the taxi himself and tips the driver, it’s a little more than he can afford, but that’s the way he is …‘And of course there’ll be help. We have a sort of fund at Haarklein & Co. I’ll see to it first thing tomorrow. Not to have enough to eat is awful …!’