DOT AND ANTON

by Erich Kästner

  ‘Shake paws, Piefke,’ she ordered. But Piefke couldn’t do that yet. Dot bent down, picked up the dachshund and lifted him onto her little desk. She tied the free end of the thread to Piefke’s left hind leg. ‘Now, jump down!’ she told him.

  Instead of jumping, Piefke curled up and was obviously thinking of having a nice long sleep on the desk.

  ‘Jump down!’ Dot muttered in threatening tones. Resigning herself to her fate, she closed her eyes.

  The little dachshund pricked up his ears, as well as he could with such floppy ones. But he still wasn’t going to jump.

  Dot opened her eyes again. She’d gone through all that anxiety in advance for nothing. She shoved Piefke, and now there was nothing for it; he had to jump down to the floor. ‘Has the tooth come out yet?’ she asked him. The dog didn’t know either. Dot felt the inside of her mouth. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The thread’s too long, dear boy.’

  She climbed up on the stool that stood at the desk, with Piefke under her arm, and then bent down to put him on the desk again. ‘If this doesn’t work,’ she muttered, ‘I’ll have myself given chloroform.’ She gave Piefke a little push, he slid over the desk, Dot stood bolt upright. The dog sailed over the side of the desk and dropped to the floor.

  ‘Ow!’ screeched the child. She could taste blood. Piefke hopped into his basket. He was glad not to be tied to anything any more. Dot wiped a few tears out of her eyes. ‘Oh, my word!’ she said, looking for a handkerchief. At last she found one, put it in her mouth and bit down on it. The thread was hanging over the side of the dog’s basket, and a small white tooth lay in the middle of the room. Dot freed Piefke from the thread, picked up the tooth and danced round the room. Then she rushed off to see Miss Andacht.

  ‘My tooth’s come out, my tooth’s come out!’ she cried.

  Miss Andacht quickly covered up a piece of paper. She was holding a pencil in her right hand. ‘Oh yes?’ she said, and that was all.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Dot. ‘You’ve been acting very strangely for the last few days. Haven’t you noticed that yourself? What’s up?’ She stood beside the governess, took a surreptitious look at the piece of paper, and said, as if she were her own grandfather, ‘Come on, then, pour your heart out!’

  Miss Andacht didn’t in the least want to pour her heart out. ‘When does Berta have her day off?’ she asked.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Dot. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I just wondered,’ said the governess.

  ‘You just wondered?’ asked Dot indignantly. ‘That’s a fine kind of answer!’

  But she couldn’t get any more out of the governess that day. You’d have thought every word cost money. So Dot pretended to stumble, and brushed against Miss Andacht’s arm. The piece of paper came into view. It was covered with rectangles drawn in pencil. The words ‘Living Room’ were written on one rectangle, and the word ‘Study’ on another. But the next moment the governess’s large, dry hands were lying over it again.

  Dot didn’t know what to make of that. I must tell Anton this evening, she thought. Maybe he’ll understand it.

  An hour and a half later she was in bed. Miss Andacht was sitting beside her reading aloud the fairy tale of the hedgehog and his wife. There we are, thought Dot, the two hedgehogs look just like twins. I was right at lunchtime. If I were a twin, and the other twin was called Karoline, we could win any race in sports lessons.

  Then her parents came into her room. Her mother was wearing a beautiful silk evening dress and a pair of golden shoes, and her father was in a dinner jacket. They both gave their daughter a goodnight kiss, and Mrs Pogge said, ‘Sleep well, darling.’

  ‘I will,’ said Dot.

  Her father sat down on the edge of her bed, but his wife said firmly, ‘Come along, you know the Consul General likes punctuality.’

  The little girl nodded to her father. ‘Don’t do anything stupid, Director!’ she said.

  No sooner had her parents left than Dot jumped out of bed and cried out, ‘Let’s go!’ Miss Andacht hurried into her room, got a torn old dress out of the chest of drawers and took it to the child. She herself put on a patched skirt and a faded old sweater. ‘Are you ready?’ she asked.

  ‘You bet!’ said Dot happily, although she was a sorry sight in her torn dress. ‘You haven’t put your headscarf on yet,’ she told the governess.

  ‘Now where did I leave it the day before yesterday?’ Miss Andacht asked, but then she found it, tied it over her head, put on a pair of glasses with blue-tinted lenses, brought a shopping bag out from under the sofa and, thus disguised, the two of them stole out of the house.

  Ten minutes after they had left, Berta came quietly creeping down the stairs from her maid’s room up in the attics, or at least as quietly as fat Berta could creep. She knocked gently on Dot’s door, but there was no answer.

  I wonder if the little shrimp’s asleep yet, she asked herself. Maybe she’s just pretending not to hear me. And I only wanted to give her a piece of the cake I baked today, but since that minx Miss Andacht has been here I daren’t go into Dot’s room any more. When I opened the door the other day I nearly collided with my fine lady. The sleep before midnight is the best, says she, and mustn’t be disturbed. Sleep before midnight, what nonsense! Nowadays Dot sometimes looks as if she didn’t get a wink of sleep all night. And all that fuss and to-do and whispering. Well, I don’t know, but things seem to me rather peculiar here just now. If it weren’t for the director and Dot, I’d have given notice long ago.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ she threatened Piefke, who was sitting up in his basket outside Dot’s door and snapping at the piece of cake. ‘Lie down, Piefke, and let’s not have a squeak out of you. Here, you can have a little bit, but then keep quiet. You’re the only one in this household who isn’t keeping secrets from me.’

  ABOUT CURIOSITY

  When my mother reads a novel she does it like this: she reads the first twenty pages and then the end, then she skims the parts in between, and then she really starts reading the book all the way through. Why does she do that? Before she can read the story in peace she has to know how it will end. Otherwise it gives her no rest at all. Mind you don’t get used to that kind of thing! And if you happen to be doing it already, then wean yourselves off it, okay?

  Because it’s as if you went rummaging round in your mother’s wardrobe two weeks before Christmas, so as to find out in advance what your presents will be. And when it comes to the present-giving, you’ll already know about it. Don’t you think that’s terrible? You’ll have to pretend to be surprised, but you’ll have known what your presents are for ages, and your parents will wonder why you’re not really delighted. Their Christmas will be spoilt, and so will yours.

  And even when you were searching the wardrobe and found the presents two weeks early, you wouldn’t have really been enjoying yourselves for fear of being taken by surprise. You just have to know how to wait. Curiosity is the death of delight.

  Chapter Six

  The Children on the Night Shift

  Do you know the Weidendammer Bridge? Have you ever seen it in the evening, when the neon advertisements are shining there under the night sky? Display boxes cover the façades of the Comic Opera House and the Admiral’s Palace Theatre, and the ads are picked out in fluorescent writing inside them. At the gable end of another building, on the other side of the River Spree, there’s an advertisement for a well-known brand of washing powder shown by a thousand flickering electric light bulbs; you see a huge cauldron with steam coming from it, a snow-white shirt rises in the steam like a friendly ghost, and then there’s a whole series of coloured pictures. And beyond, above the buildings along the Schiffbauerdamm, you see the gable end of the Grand Theatre shining brightly.

  Columns of buses roll over the arch of the bridge, with Friedrichstrasse Station rising in the background. Elevated railway lines run over the city from that station. The train windows are brightly lit, and the carriages wind their way into t
he night like shimmering snakes. Sometimes the sky looks pink with the reflection of all the lights shining down below.

  Berlin is a beautiful city, particularly seen from this bridge, and most of all in the evening. Friedrichstrasse itself is a street crowded with cars. The street lights shine, car headlights flash, and throngs of people make their way along the pavements. The trains whistle, the buses clatter, the cars hoot their horns, the people talk and laugh. There’s so much life going on there, children!

  A poor woman, thin and wearing dark glasses, was standing on the bridge. She held a shopping bag and a few boxes of matches. Beside her, a little girl in a torn dress was bobbing curtseys to the passers-by. ‘Matches, please buy my matches, ladies and gentlemen!’ the little girl was pleading in a trembling voice. Many people walking along the bridge went straight past the two of them. ‘Have a heart, please take pity on us poor people!’ cried the child in pathetic tones. ‘Only ten pfennigs a box!’ A fat man coming towards them put his hand in his pocket.

  ‘My mother is totally blind, and still so young,’ stammered the girl. The fat man gave her a small coin and walked on. ‘God bless you, kind lady!’ said the child. The tall, thin woman dug her in the ribs. ‘That wasn’t a lady, it was a man, you silly thing,’ muttered the woman crossly.

  ‘Are you blind or aren’t you?’ asked the little girl, sounding injured. But then she bobbed another curtsey and asked, in her trembling voice, ‘Matches, please buy our matches, ladies and gentlemen!’ This time an old lady gave her a coin and a friendly nod.

  ‘Business is booming,’ the child whispered. ‘We’ve already made two marks thirty, and we’ve only had to give five boxes of matches in return.’ Raising her voice, she cried plaintively again, ‘Have a heart, take pity on us poor people. Only ten pfennigs a box of matches!’ Suddenly she hopped happily and waved. ‘There’s Anton on the other side of the street,’ she told her companion. But then she hunched her shoulders again, bobbed curtseys and wailed hard enough to terrify the passers-by. ‘Thank you, thank you kindly,’ she cried. Their capital was growing. She threw the money she had been given into the shopping bag, where it fell on the other coins with a cheerful clink. ‘Are you really going to give all that money to your fiancé?’ she asked. ‘Won’t he just be pleased!’

  ‘Hold your tongue,’ the woman ordered.

  ‘Well, it’s true,’ replied Dot. ‘Why else are we standing here evening after evening hanging around like this?’

  ‘Don’t you say another word!’ the woman muttered crossly.

  ‘Matches for sale, buy my matches, ladies and gentlemen!’ wailed Dot again, because more people were coming past. ‘I’d rather we gave Anton some of it. He’ll be standing on the wrong side of the road until Saturday.’ Suddenly she squealed as if someone had kicked her. ‘Here comes that nasty Klepperbein!’

  Anton was indeed standing at the other side of the bridge, on the wrong side of the road running over it; not many people walked on that side. He was holding a small case open in front of him, and when anyone passed he said, ‘Brown or black shoelaces for lace-up shoes? Or please buy some matches, they always come in useful.’ He didn’t have a very good line in sales talk or much of a gift for complaining, although he really did feel more like crying than laughing. He had promised the landlord to pay him five marks rent the day after next, and the housekeeping money had run out again. He needed to buy margarine tomorrow, and he was even planning to get a quarter-pound of liver sausage.

  ‘You ought to be in bed, not here,’ a gentleman told him.

  Anton looked at him in surprise. ‘But I like begging,’ he murmured.

  The man felt a little ashamed of himself. ‘Well, never mind,’ he said. ‘Don’t be cross.’ And then he gave him a coin—a whole fifty pfennigs!

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Anton, offering him two pairs of shoelaces.

  ‘I’m wearing pull-on boots,’ the gentleman explained as he took his hat off to the boy and hurried away.

  Anton, feeling pleased, looked at his friend Dot on the other side of the bridge. Hello, wasn’t that Klepperbein with her? He closed his case and hurried over the road. Gottfried Klepperbein had planted himself in front of Dot and Miss Andacht and was staring at them cheekily. Dot was putting out her tongue at the caretaker’s son, but the governess was trembling in alarm. Anton kicked Klepperbein’s backside. The boy swung round furiously, but when he saw Anton Gast standing there he remembered getting his face punched that afternoon and went off at a steady run.

  ‘There, we’re rid of him,’ said Dot, giving Anton her hand.

  ‘Come on,’ said Miss Andacht. ‘Let’s go to the self-service café.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Dot, taking Anton’s hand and going ahead with him. Miss Andacht called her back. ‘Aren’t you going to guide me? What will people think if I set off just like that in spite of my dark glasses?’ So Dot took the governess’s hand and led her off the bridge, along Friedrichstrasse and towards the Oranienburger Gate underground station.

  ‘How much have you made?’ she asked Anton.

  ‘Ninety-five pfennigs,’ said the boy sadly. ‘One gentleman gave me fifty pfennigs. Apart from that I might as well pack it in.’

  Dot pressed something into his hand. ‘Here, have this,’ she whispered mysteriously.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Miss Andacht in suspicious tones.

  ‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ said Dot. ‘I don’t ask you what those funny drawings of yours are, do I?’

  Miss Andacht didn’t say anything in reply to that. It was as if she had been struck by lightning.

  The street was fairly empty here. The governess took off her dark glasses and let go of Dot’s hand. They turned a couple of corners, and then they had reached their destination.

  ABOUT POVERTY

  About 150 years ago, the poorest people in the city of Paris went to Versailles, where the King of France and his wife lived. It was a demonstration. I’m sure you know what a demonstration is. The poor people stood outside the palace and called out, ‘We have no bread to eat! We have no bread to eat!’ They were very badly off.

  Queen Marie Antoinette stood at the window and asked a high officer of state, ‘What do the people want?’

  ‘Your Majesty,’ said the officer of state, ‘they want bread. They don’t have enough bread, and they are very hungry.’

  The Queen shook her head in surprise. ‘They don’t have enough bread to eat?’ she asked. ‘Then let them eat cake!’

  You may think that she was laughing at the poor people when she said that. But she didn’t know what poverty means. She thought that if there didn’t happen to be enough bread in the house, you could simply eat cake instead. She didn’t know the people, she didn’t know about poverty, and that was why her head was chopped off a year later.

  Don’t you agree that it would be easier to do away with poverty if only rich people had known, when they were children, what it was like to be poor? Don’t you think that then the rich children would say: when we’re grown up, and we own our fathers’ banks and landed estates and factories, we’ll make sure life is easier for workers—the workers who had been their childhood playmates?

  Do you think that would be possible? Will you help to make sure that it is?

  Chapter Seven

  Miss Andacht Gets Tipsy

  There were sometimes odd people standing or sitting around in the café, and Dot liked going to it because she thought it was so interesting. Sometimes there were even drunks there!

  Anton yawned. He was so tired that his eyes were half closed. ‘It was terrible,’ he said, ‘I dropped off to sleep in the arithmetic lesson today. Mr Bremser shouted at me so loud that I almost fell off the bench. He said I ought to be ashamed of myself, and my homework left much to be desired these days. And if it went on like this, he said, he was going to write a letter to my mother.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Dot. ‘That’s all we needed. Doesn’t he know that your mother i
s ill, and you have to cook the meals and earn money?’

  ‘How would he know that?’ asked Anton curiously.

  ‘From you, of course,’ said Dot.

  ‘I’d sooner bite my tongue off,’ said Anton.

  Dot didn’t understand that. She shrugged her shoulders and turned to Miss Andacht, who was sitting in her corner staring straight ahead. ‘I thought you’d invited us here,’ she said.

  Miss Andacht jumped, and slowly came back to her senses. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Oranges with whipped cream,’ suggested Dot, and Anton nodded. The governess stood up and went over to the buffet counter.

  ‘Where did you get the money you gave me just now?’ asked the boy.

  ‘Miss Andacht only gives the money we make to her fiancé, so I kept some of it back. Hush, no arguing,’ she said sternly. ‘Watch out, I bet she’ll be having cognac again. She drinks, poor soul. Listen, she was sitting in her room today drawing rectangles in pencil, and it said “Living room” on one of them and “Study” on another. That was all I saw.’

  ‘It must have been the plan of an apartment,’ said Anton.

  Dot clapped her hand to her forehead. ‘I’m an idiot,’ she said. ‘To think I didn’t work that out for myself! But why would she be drawing plans of apartments?’ Anton didn’t know the answer to that either. Then Miss Andacht came back, bringing the children dishes of orange segments. She herself was drinking cognac. ‘We must have made at least three marks,’ she said. ‘But there’s only one mark eighty in my pocket. Can you understand it?’

  ‘Maybe there’s a hole in your pocket?’ suggested Dot.

  Miss Andacht investigated her pocket at once. ‘No, there isn’t,’ she said.