DOT AND ANTON

by Erich Kästner

  However, she was leaning on the window sill, silent and motionless. He went out of the room, into the kitchen, sat down beside the stove and waited to begin crying. But no tears would come. Just sometimes, he shook as if someone were holding him by the collar.

  Then he went to get his paintbox and took a mark out of it. There was no point in any of that now. He put the mark in his pocket. Could he run downstairs now and buy her a present? Then he’d be able to put it through the letter box and run away. And never come back again! Some chocolate and a birthday card would go through the flap of the letter box easily. He would write ‘From your deeply unhappy son Anton’ inside the card. Then his mother would at least have a good memory of him.

  He stole out of the kitchen on tiptoe, went down the corridor, cautiously opened the handle of the front door and closed the door behind him like a thief.

  His mother stood by the window for a long time, looking through the panes as if her poor, sad life lay spread out there before her. She had had nothing but trouble, nothing but illness and anxiety. There seemed to be a secret meaning in the fact that her son had forgotten her birthday. She was slowly losing him, too, just as she had lost everything else, and in that case her whole life had lost its meaning. When she had her operation, she had thought: I must stay alive, because what will become of Anton if I die? And now he had forgotten her birthday!

  At last she felt pity for the little lad. Where could he be? He’d have been sorry for his forgetfulness long ago. He had asked, ‘Did you say something, Mama?’ before he sadly left the room. She mustn’t be hard on him. He’d had such a shock. She mustn’t be stern, when he’d put up with so much for her sake these last few weeks. First he had visited her every day in hospital. He’d had to eat in the soup kitchen run by a charity, and he’d been all alone in the apartment day and night. Then she had been brought home. She’d stayed in bed for two weeks, and Anton cooked and did the shopping, and he even cleaned round the room with a wet cloth now and then.

  She began looking for him. She went into the bedroom. She went into the kitchen. She even tried the toilet. She put on the light in the corridor and investigated the space behind the cupboards. ‘Anton!’ she called. ‘Come here, my dear, I’m not cross now! Anton!’

  Sometimes she called his name in a loud voice, sometimes she called it in a soft, loving voice. He wasn’t in the apartment. He had run away! She felt terribly anxious. She called his name pleadingly. But he had gone.

  He had gone! She flung the front door of the apartment open and ran downstairs to go in search of her boy.

  ABOUT SELF-CONTROL

  Do you like Anton? I like him very much, but to be honest I don’t particularly like the way he ran off and left his mother on her own. Where would we be if everyone who did something wrong tried running away from it? It doesn’t bear thinking of. You have to keep your head, not lose it!

  It’s the same in other ways as well. A boy gets bad marks at school, or his teacher writes his parents a letter, or a child accidentally breaks an expensive vase at home, and then we so often read in the paper: ‘Ran away for fear of punishment. Isn’t to be found anywhere. The parents dread the worst.’

  No, ladies and gentlemen, that’s not the way to act! If you’ve done something wrong, you have to pull yourself together and face the music. If you’re so scared of punishment then you ought to have thought of that before.

  Self-control is an important, valuable quality. And the especially remarkable thing about it is that you can learn self-control. Alexander the Great didn’t want to be carried away into acting without thinking, so he always counted up to thirty before doing anything. That’s a very good idea. You should do the same if necessary.

  It would be an even better idea to count up to sixty.

  Chapter Ten

  Things Could Go Wrong

  ‘Hello, Mrs Gast,’ someone said to Mrs Gast as she came out of the building. ‘You’re looking wonderful.’ It was Dot, with Piefke, and in fact Dot thought that Anton’s mother looked shockingly pale and upset. However, the boy had asked her to say how good his mother looked, and she was a girl who kept her word, wasn’t she just! Miss Andacht was at the Café Sommerlatte with her fiancé, and she had told Dot to meet her there at six o’clock precisely.

  Mrs Gast looked around her, distraught, and gave Dot her hand without saying a word.

  ‘Where’s Anton?’ the child asked.

  ‘Gone!’ whispered Mrs Gast. ‘Oh dear, just think, he’s run away. I was upset because he forgot it was my birthday.’

  ‘Many happy returns,’ said Dot. ‘Of your birthday, I mean.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Mrs Gast replied. ‘Oh, where can he be?’

  ‘Don’t lose your head,’ Dot consoled her. ‘We’ll find him. They say a bad penny always turns up. Suppose we go to the shops and ask in all of them?’ And as Anton’s mother didn’t seem to be listening, Dot took her hand and led her to the dairy on the ground floor of the next building. Then she put her dachshund down in the street and told him, ‘Good dog! Go and find Anton. Seek!’ But yet again it turned out that Piefke didn’t understand human language.

  Meanwhile, Anton was buying chocolate.

  The saleswoman was an old lady with an enormous goitre under her chin. She looked at him suspiciously as, with a totally miserable expression on his face, he asked for a bar of the best milk chocolate.

  ‘It’s for a birthday present,’ he said gloomily.

  She got a little friendlier then, gift-wrapped the chocolate beautifully in tissue paper and tied a pale blue silk ribbon round it. ‘Thank you very much indeed,’ he said in a serious voice, and he carefully put the chocolate bar in his pocket and paid. She gave him change, and he went into the stationer’s shop next door.

  In the stationer’s shop, he chose a card from the birthday card album. It was a beautiful card, with a picture of a stout commissionaire smiling cheerfully on it, and the stout commissionaire was holding a large pot of flowers in the crook of each arm. Golden lettering at his feet said: ‘All good wishes for your happiness on your birthday.’

  Anton looked sadly at the lovely picture. Then he went behind the desk where you could write your own message, and added on the back, in his best and most laborious handwriting, ‘From your deeply unhappy son Anton. Please forgive me, dear Mama, I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ Then he pushed the card under the blue ribbon round the gift-wrapped chocolate bar and hurried out into the street. At this point he was feeling very emotional because of his own sad fate. He was afraid that he was going to cry, but he bravely swallowed his tears and went on, his head bowed.

  Once inside the building he felt very frightened. He made his way up to the fourth floor like an Indian on the warpath. On tiptoe, he went over to the door of the apartment. He raised the flap of the letter box and put his present through it. It made a noise as it dropped, and his heart thumped.

  But nothing inside the apartment moved.

  At this point he ought really to have run away to die somewhere as fast as possible. But he couldn’t do it just like that, so he hesitantly pressed the doorbell. Then he ran to the landing of the next staircase along and waited, holding his breath. Still nothing moved inside the apartment.

  He ventured to go back to the door again. He rang the bell once more. And then he ran downstairs again.

  And still there wasn’t a sound to be heard! What was the matter with his mother? Had something happened to her? Had she fallen ill again because she was so worried about him? Was she lying in bed, unable to move? He hadn’t taken his keys with him. Perhaps she had turned on the gas to kill herself in her grief? He ran back to the door and clattered the flap of the letter box. He banged on the door with both fists. He called through the keyhole. ‘Mama! Mama! It’s me. Open the door!’

  Still nothing stirred inside the apartment.

  He fell to his knees on the straw matting, sobbing. Now it was all over.

  Anton’s mother and Dot had asked all the shopkeepers who kn
ew Anton. The milkman, the baker, the butcher, the greengrocer, the cobbler, the plumber—none of them had seen him.

  Dot ran over to the traffic policeman on duty at the cross-roads and asked him. But he just shook his head and went on waving his arms at the cars. All that waving annoyed Dot. She squealed. Meanwhile Mrs Gast was waiting on the pavement, looking anxiously at everything around them. ‘No luck,’ said Dot. ‘I tell you what, I think we’d better go back to your home.’

  But Mrs Gast didn’t move.

  ‘He could be down in the cellar,’ said the child.

  ‘The cellar?’ repeated Anton’s mother.

  ‘Yes, or up in the attic,’ Dot suggested.

  And they ran over the road as fast as they could and back into the apartment building. Just as Mrs Gast was about to open the cellar door, she heard someone sobbing upstairs.

  ‘That’s him!’ cried Dot.

  Anton’s mother was laughing and crying at the same time. She ran up the stairs so fast that Dot could hardly keep up with her. ‘Anton!’ cried his mother.

  And his voice replied, from higher up, ‘Mama! Mama!’ Then a great race began, one of them running upstairs and the other downstairs. Dot stayed where she was on the first floor. She didn’t want to be in the way, and she held Piefke’s muzzle shut to keep him quiet.

  Mother and son met halfway on the stairs and fell into each other’s arms. They couldn’t stop hugging and kissing, they were so glad to be back together again. They sat on the stairs, holding hands and smiling. They were both very tired, and couldn’t think of anything but how happy they were. At last Anton’s mother said, ‘Come along, my boy, we can’t sit here for ever. Suppose someone saw us.’

  ‘No, that would never do. They wouldn’t understand,’ said Anton. They climbed the rest of the stairs together, hand in hand. When his mother had unlocked the door and gone into the living room with him, Anton whispered in her ear, ‘Look in the letter box.’

  She looked, clapped her hands, and cried, ‘Oh, someone’s been here to leave me a birthday card!’

  ‘Really?’ he said, giving her a big hug and wishing her a very happy birthday and many, many happy returns. She secretly read the back of the beautiful birthday card while she was making coffee. She cried a little, but it was out of sheer happiness.

  Then the doorbell rang. Mrs Gast opened the door. ‘Oh, goodness, I quite forgot you!’

  ‘Let me wish you many happy returns of the day again,’ said Dot. ‘May we come in?’ Then Anton came along to say hello to her and the dachshund. ‘Honestly, you’ll give me white hairs!’ Dot told him reproachfully. ‘We searched everywhere for you. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.’ She rubbed noses with him. Then his mother came into the living room with the coffee pot, and they all drank coffee. There wasn’t any birthday cake, but the three of them were very happy all the same. And Piefke barked a little song for the birthday girl.

  After coffee, Anton’s mother told the children, ‘You have a little walk. I’m going to bed. All this excitement has been rather too much for my first full day up and about. I shall sleep wonderfully well tonight.’

  On the stairs, Anton told Dot, ‘I won’t be forgetting today in a hurry.’

  ABOUT FAMILY HAPPINESS

  Grown-ups have their own troubles. Children have their own troubles too. And sometimes the troubles are more than the children and the grown-ups can cope with, and because they are so big and broad those troubles cast many, many shadows. So the parents and their children sit in the shade of their troubles and feel freezing cold. Then, if a child goes to his father and asks a question, the father growls, ‘Leave me alone! I’m busy thinking!’ So the child goes away, and the father hides behind his newspaper. And if the mother comes into the room and asks, ‘What’s the matter?’ they both say, ‘Oh, nothing to speak of,’ and family happiness turns to vinegar. Or sometimes the parents quarrel, or like Dot’s parents they’re never at home, and they hand their children over to strangers, for instance people like Miss Andacht. Or someone else, and then…

  As I was writing that, I suddenly realized that this afterthought really ought to be read by grown-ups. So next time there’s trouble at home, open the book at this page and give it to your parents to read, will you? That never does anyone any harm.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mr Pogge Practises Spying

  When Mr Pogge the director came home in the evening, Gottfried Klepperbein met him at the front door of the building. ‘Oh, your coat’s all dirty at the back, sir,’ he said. ‘Just a moment.’ Dot’s father stopped, and the caretaker’s son brushed down the back of his coat, although it wasn’t dirty at all. That was the boy’s favourite trick, and it had already earned him a lot of money. ‘There,’ he said, holding out his hand. Mr Pogge gave him a small coin and was going on into the building, but Gottfried Klepperbein stood in his way. ‘I could give you a hint well worth ten marks,’ he offered.

  ‘Let me by, please,’ said Mr Pogge.

  ‘It’s about the young lady your daughter,’ whispered Gottfried Klepperbein, and he winked.

  ‘Well, what about her?’

  ‘Ten marks, or I’m not saying another word,’ the boy told him, holding out his hand again.

  ‘I pay only on delivery of the goods,’ said Dot’s father.

  ‘Word of honour?’ asked the boy.

  ‘What? Oh, I see. Very well, word of honour.’

  ‘Are you going out again this evening?’

  ‘We’re going to the opera,’ said Mr Pogge.

  ‘Then pretend to leave,’ Gottfried Klepperbein told him, ‘but wait here outside the building, and if you don’t get the surprise of your life a quarter of an hour later then Bob’s your uncle!’

  ‘All right,’ said Mr Pogge, and he pushed past the boy and went into the building.

  Before Dot’s parents left for the opera house they went to her room, as usual. Dot was in bed, and Miss Andacht was reading her the story of Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp.

  Dot’s mother shook her head. ‘A big girl like you, still having fairy tales read to her!’

  ‘Fairy tales are so exciting and magical, and so peculiar too,’ said Dot. ‘I love them!’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said her father, ‘but they’re not exactly the right thing to read before you go to sleep.’

  ‘I have strong nerves, you see, Director,’ claimed his daughter.

  ‘Sleep well, darling,’ said Dot’s mother. This evening she was wearing silver shoes, a little silvery hat and a blue dress trimmed with lace.

  ‘Good wet,’ said Dot.

  ‘What?’ asked her mother.

  ‘It’s going to rain,’ said the child. ‘I have rheumatism in my nightie.’

  ‘It’s raining already,’ said her mother.

  ‘There you are then,’ Dot pointed out. ‘My rheumatism is always right.’

  Mr Pogge asked Miss Andacht whether she was going out herself later.

  ‘Goodness me, no, sir,’ she replied.

  When his wife was in the car, he said, ‘Give me my ticket, will you? I forgot to bring my cigars. You go on ahead, Hollack, and I’ll follow in a taxi.’

  Mrs Pogge looked curiously at her husband and gave him one of their tickets. He waved to the chauffeur, and the car drove away.

  Of course Mr Pogge didn’t go back to the apartment. He was not the sort of man to forget his cigars. He got behind a tree opposite the building and waited. He thought it was rather silly of him to fall for that boy’s strange ideas, and he felt ashamed of it. On the other hand, he’d had a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach for several days.

  So, in short, he waited. Thin rain was falling. The street was deserted, except for a car driving past now and then. Mr Pogge the director couldn’t remember ever standing in the rain waiting for something mysterious to happen before.

  He took a cigar out of his cigar case. Then it occurred to him that the glowing end of a cigar would give him away in the dark, so he kept it clenched
between his teeth, unlit. Suppose someone he knew saw him now! What a sensational scandal that would be! ‘Fancy Pogge the well-known businessman standing on the watch outside his own apartment,’ people would say.

  He looked up at the windows of the building. There was still a light on in Dot’s room. So much for the boy’s ideas.

  There! The light went out!

  Why was he getting worked up like this? Dot had probably gone to sleep, and the governess would be back in her own room. All the same, his heart was beating faster. He peered through the dim light at the front door of the building.

  And then it opened! Mr Pogge bit his lower lip, almost swallowing the cigar. A woman’s figure slipped out, leading a child behind her. The two of them moved like ghosts in the darkness. The front door closed. The woman looked around in concern. Mr Pogge kept close to the tree. Then the woman and the child ran off towards the city centre.

  Perhaps they were total strangers? Mr Pogge the director followed them on the other side of the street. He was out of breath, and kept his hand over his mouth. He stepped in puddles, brushed against lamp posts and hardly noticed when one of his sock suspenders gave way. The other two had no idea that they were being shadowed. The child stumbled, and the tall, thin woman dragged her on. Suddenly they stopped, just before the quiet street merged with the traffic of the big city.

  Mr Pogge, on tiptoe, went a little farther. What was going on over there? He couldn’t see properly. He was afraid the couple might get away from him. He kept his eyes wide open and tried not to blink, as if they might disappear from the face of the earth if he lowered his lids even for a second.

  But no, the two figures, the woman and the child, came out of the shadows of the quiet buildings and made for the bright lights of the next street. The woman had put a headscarf on. She was walking very slowly, and now the little girl was leading the woman as if she suddenly felt ill. Although there was such a crowd of people going along the street here, Mr Pogge could follow them easily. They passed Friedrichstrasse Station and went towards the Weidendammer Bridge.