by Hans Fallada
Beerboom sighed deeply and went on writing. And Kufalt set to work. ‘He won’t give me away again,’ he thought. ‘But there are so many ways it might happen. At the police station they might drop a hint to the landlady. Or there’ll be a letter forwarded from the prison. Or an inquiry about me . . . ’ And Kufalt too sighed deeply.
But later, in the midday break—generously extended by Seidenzopf, though Petersen was deputed to go with him—on his visit to a store to buy what was needed for his bachelor establishment, his cheerful mood surfaced again.
‘There. Plate, cup, meat dish. What else does a bachelor want, miss?’
‘A cheese cover?’
‘Cheese cover? Perhaps. What does a cheese cover cost? No. But a butter dish, miss, I wonder you didn’t think of that . . . ’
Between the three of them a butter dish was bought. But a furnished room is not a larder, it is often hot—what about this earthenware water-cooler . . . ?
‘Very dear. And does it really work . . . ?’
The student explained: ‘It’s based on the principle of evaporation, you know, Kufalt. You must put it in the hottest sunshine, and it gets all the cooler, do you see? The ancient Egyptians . . . ’
‘Very well, miss; and what else is needed for a bachelor household? Nothing? All complete? Then make out the bill . . . I think the china’s really very pretty with that red line round it . . . ’
‘If I were you,’ said the shop girl, looking up from her receipt book with a sly quick smile, ‘if I were you I would buy two of everything now . . . ’
‘Two?’ said Kufalt. ‘Two butter dishes?’
‘No,’ she laughed. ‘Not butter dishes. But plates and cups. One isn’t always going to be alone.’
‘I guess not,’ laughed Kufalt. ‘You ought to know.’ And he gazed meditatively at the soft white bosom just visible above the yoke of the black dress.
‘I do,’ she said, with a half-embarrassed laugh. ‘And later on you might not get the same pattern. And it ought all to match.’
‘Yes, it certainly ought,’ agreed Kufalt, with his eyes still on that breathing bosom.
In his cell, during the five years, the girls of his earlier days had been used up. They had melted away, they had been so often reduced to the simplest physical details that they had become merged into each other. First they became all alike, then they dissolved in a mist—hair and flesh—nothing more . . .
Now, on this glorious June afternoon, as Kufalt put envelope after envelope into his machine, tapped his addresses and flicked them out again, life cheered up once more; already two girls to think about: one with an oval face, and another with a white, rising, milky bosom. Two instead of none.
It all hung together. There was that appointment with Batzke. It would certainly have boded no good: made in a cell, it led back to a cell.
The young, lively greenness of the garden, the radiant sunshine, an oval face and the remembered words: ‘One isn’t always alone’—can a typewriter sing . . . ? He sang to the rhythm of his tapping keys. ‘There’s a way out into freedom—one isn’t always alone—there’s a way out into freedom—where two are better than one . . . ’
‘It’s a good life,’ he thought.
Old Widow Behn was in his room, helping her new lodger with his unpacking. As for Fräulein Behn . . .
‘Liese,’ said the old lady, ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with Liese these days. I can’t tell you exactly, but she’s out every evening. She says she listens to the band in the Hammer Park—I wonder what kind of band it is she listens to.’
‘Old dragon,’ thought Kufalt, and he said aloud:
‘Is she your only one, Frau Behn?’
‘No, thirteen. She could have helped you so nicely with your things—but no, she must go and listen to the band. Do you know, when I was young I worked from four in the morning until ten at night. I was in the country from the time I was fourteen . . . ’
‘So you have thirteen children?’
‘Only two are alive . . . Then afterwards I came to the town. But I was silly. My mistress in the town said to me: “Go and fetch four pounds of roast beef”; she pronounced it ross-bif, and I thought she said horse beef. I stood in the street and thought to myself: eat horse meat! No, I won’t begin doing that, not me! I told the mistress it was all gone. Did she make a row when she found out why I never brought roast beef.’
The old woman laughed, and Kufalt laughed too.
‘Nowadays girls are cleverer, but I wish Liese would go a bit slower. Out every evening . . . ’
‘When people are young, Frau Behn . . . ’
‘I won’t say another word! Liese isn’t really so bad, she pays her board and lodging regularly. But my boy Willi, he earns a lot of money, he’s a chauffeur. But he’s a bad lad, he is. He comes along and says: “Mother, have you got something to eat?” He eats all my food, and then says: “Mother, have you got ten marks? You can have them back this evening, but I must fill up quick.” And then he goes off and we don’t see him for a month. There’s no sense in having children, young man, what’s the good of them? You wear yourself to the bone to rear them and feed them, and then they go, they’re always walking off and leaving you.’
‘Not all of them, Frau Behn, you said yourself that your daughter . . . ’
‘What did I say? Just because she pays her board and lodging? So? No, the real reason is so that when she gets into trouble, she’ll push her brat off onto me! That’s why! I’m not a fool, I come from the country and I know a bit. Girls are so clever these days, they just laugh. She says: “Mother, it isn’t what you think.” And I say: “What isn’t?” And she laughs: “Oh give over, I mean I’m not going to be the mother of thirteen like you—not me!” But I say . . . ’
Kufalt felt hot; he shifted his shoulders uneasily underneath his jacket and looked towards the window. No, the window was open, the curtains swaying in the fresh night breeze.
‘Yes, the books,’ he said vaguely; ‘what about the books? Perhaps you could take the ornaments off the cupboard, Frau Behn?’
‘Certainly,’ said she. ‘I don’t mind. One lodger wants the pictures taken down, another doesn’t want a chamber pot, you don’t want any ornaments—it’s all the same to me, we’re all picked out of the oven just as we’ve been baked. There’s no sense to be got out of books.’
‘No,’ agreed Kufalt.
‘I know,’ said the old woman with a satisfied air. ‘You’ve got rings round your eyes, and when I talk about Liese you can’t look me in the face. I know all about it, my dear young man, though I’m past such things. I’ll give you one bit of advice, though you won’t take it: don’t you get mixed up with Liese, she’s bad news, she’s got no heart . . . ’
‘Who’s bad news? Who’s got no heart?’ came a voice from the door, and the two started up from the big box as if they had been caught red-handed.
Liese Behn was standing in the doorway. Small: yes. Attractive: yes. Oval-faced: yes. But with a nasty perpendicular wrinkle between the eyebrows. A red, but sharp and narrow mouth.
‘Been talking again, Mother, have you? Has she been telling you that I’m half a whore, Herr Kufalt? The sort of girl that’ll go with any man? Go, Mother, go and lie down. You ought to be ashamed of yourself—ugh!’
The bent and toil-worn old creature knelt motionless beside the box, silent, her face quite rigid. Then she got up and shuffled, with bowed head, towards the door. She hesitated as she reached her daughter in the doorway, but the girl did not move. The old woman looked at her humbly, and then squeezed past without a word. Her footsteps could be heard shuffling along the passage; a door closed; silence.
Kufalt, who also felt embarrassed, threw an uneasy look at the girl. She was standing in the same position, gnawing her lower lip, and did not look at him. He picked up a pile of books out of the box and carried them to the cupboard, with a sidelong glance at Liese as he went.
She was wearing a white dress with red spots, and her bright li
ttle hat was lined with red—the old woman had certainly lied, she did not look in the least like . . .
‘Mother’s ill,’ she said slowly. ‘You’d better not talk to her, she invents all sorts of nasty stories about everyone . . . ’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Kufalt; ‘one has only to look at you, Fräulein Behn . . . ’
‘You’re not to look at me!’ she cried, stamping her foot. ‘Not now. Not after that. Yesterday evening, yes, but not today.’
‘I am putting the books away,’ murmured Kufalt. ‘I am not looking at you.’
For a while there was silence. Kufalt’s heart was throbbing; but everything was different, men grow up, and girls; it was an odd world . . .
She cleared her throat, picked up a book, looked at it, put it down, and looked at another. Then she said:
‘Well—goodnight.’
She went out of the room without another glance at him, nor did she give him her hand.
III
It had always been whispered in the typing room that the business in the Apfelstrasse was not Pastor Marcetus’s only typing firm; there was another in the centre of the city, with all the latest equipment, where there were not only addresses to be typed, but also better work: letters, manuscripts and dictation. But it was no more than rumour; no one knew anything definite. A short, fat, pimply man by the name of Jauch sometimes appeared in the Apfelstrasse typing room, and Herr Mergenthal and Herr Seidenzopf were very polite to him. Sometimes, too, one or other of the workers disappeared; Herr Seidenzopf went out with him, and he did not come back again.
Did this legendary typing room really exist?
A few days after Kufalt’s removal to the Marienthaler Strasse, Father Seidenzopf came into the typing room and said: ‘Herr Maack! Herr Kufalt! Hand in the work you have done. Put back the address books. Tidy up your tables. Put on your coats and hats, and meet me at the door.’
The others barely looked up and went on with their work; only the inevitable Beerboom began his usual lamentation. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, so you’re leaving, are you? And when am I going to get out of this filthy hole? Lucky swine. I don’t see why they should take you, Kufalt. You never do more than seven hundred addresses.’
Kufalt shook hands with Mergenthal, said a general ‘good morning’ through the doorway and met Father Seidenzopf outside the door.
‘Where is Herr Maack? Ah, there you are, my dear Maack. Let us get along now. But we must hurry, I have a great deal to do today. What a lovely day it is, a truly divine day—it has been a pleasant summer this year.’
He trotted along between the two tall young men—a little elderly man with a black curly beard, babbling as he went.
‘Where are we going to, Father Seidenzopf?’ asked Kufalt.
‘Hush, my young friend,’ said Father Seidenzopf, ‘you must learn to wait. You are preferred above many; have you ever heard of the Presto Typing Agency, the most up-to-date business in Hamburg? Well, you’ll see something worth looking at.’
And when they reached the ticket counter of the overhead railway: ‘What is this, my young friends, aren’t you going to pay for your own tickets? Very well, I will advance the money, it can be deducted from your next pay. Or . . . ’—and he struggled to a heroic resolve—‘I will charge it to the typing room.’
Father Seidenzopf found a seat; Maack and Kufalt stood at the door and smoked.
‘I’m glad,’ said Kufalt, ‘that we’re going to be together in the new agency.’
‘Are you? Jauch’s a crazy brute, I’ve heard.’
‘Jauch . . . ?’
‘The fat pimply bloke who often came to our place. That’s the Presto office manager.’
‘You know all this? Oh Maack, and you never say a word. Is it a typing room like ours? Or will we earn more there?’
‘Perhaps, if you’re sent to some firm as a temp. Or if you get into the dictating room. But that won’t be for a long while. To begin with, you’ll go on with addresses. And then you’ll do copies of testimonials, and so on. And if you get on all right, and—which is the main thing—Jauch likes the look of you, he’ll send you out as a temp.’
‘But it says in the rules that we are only to work in the typing rooms for as short a time as possible, and get a business job as soon as we can.’
‘I tell you what, mate,’ said Maack; ‘that’s all eyewash, that’s just so they can put us into the street if they don’t like us or if there’s a shortage of work. Look, I’ve been working in this set-up for a year and a half, and they haven’t even taken out my unemployment insurance yet. If I’m ill I have to go to the Welfare Office and beg to see a doctor—so they save their sick benefit contributions.’
‘But it’s the law that every worker must be insured.’
‘Bless your heart, it’s a welfare organization. The money we get on Saturdays is charity. We aren’t really working!’
‘Well, you know . . . ’
‘I know quite well what could be done by three or four decent blokes with a bit of money. I’m saving hard, but the pastor, old Marcetus, says a man oughtn’t to earn more than three marks a day—more only leads him into evil ways.’
‘What! Doesn’t he earn more than three marks a day, eh?’
‘Doesn’t he just! Do you ever earn more than twenty marks a week? Twenty-one sometimes, or even twenty-two, if you tap till your fingers drop off; but they’d look pissed off if you do, and they’d want to reduce your pay. I live with a girl: a shop girl, she gets sixty-five marks a month—it isn’t much we can save.’
‘Do you think a person can live on a hundred marks a month?’
‘Of course. Quite well. What do you pay for your room?’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘Much too much. I could get you one for fifteen; or twelve. What do you want, after all? A bed and a chair, nothing else matters, if you want to get on. Clean the room yourself—an attic somewhere . . . And listen: food morning and evening, fifty pfennigs, and another fifty pfennigs midday . . . ’
‘But you can’t get lunch for fifty pfennigs.’
‘Lunch? Do you want a warm meal every day? No one has that these days. Bread, margarine, a dried herring, half a pint of milk—that’ll do you all right, and keep up your strength, and’—gesturing—‘he won’t get excited. On Sundays you can have a warm meal, and it should not cost more than ninety pfennigs. That’s fifteen marks a month for rent, thirty-five marks for food at the most, laundry—five marks, perhaps, and another five for cigarettes and cinema; altogether, sixty marks a month. And perhaps I can find you a girl who earns a bit. Then there won’t be any laundry, and the rent’s split.’
‘So that’s what you do,’ said Kufalt admiringly, firmly resolved not to do it himself.
‘What else should I do? Just think it over and tell me, and I’ll find you a room if you like.’
The train stopped, people got in and out. The train went on. ‘Look,’ said Kufalt slowly; ‘hasn’t it occurred to you that there’s a much easier way to get money?’
Silence.
Then Maack said slowly: ‘Yes, my lad, we often think of that, of course. And I wouldn’t say I mightn’t. I’m not one of the blokes who’s always saying “never again”. How am I to know what may happen? If my girl clears out because she’s fallen for a bloke with a few more beans, or if she gets pregnant—it’s a bloody shame that rubber’s too dear for the likes of us—then I might do a job again. Otherwise—no, I’m through with that sort of thing.’
‘But what do you get out of life? Everything that’s nice costs money, and you never have any.’
‘I don’t say I never will, I tell you, and I don’t know whether I’ll be able to hold out. But it’s possible I might drop into a business job at 140 or 160. I’m going to try this line for the time being . . . ’
‘Well, my dear friends, did you see the harbour in the sunshine? The Cap Arcona was there, wasn’t she? What a splendid ship! A sight that makes one proud to be a German.’
‘It does
indeed, Herr Seidenzopf.’
‘And now, my young friends, I’m going to take you to our Presto Agency. Be a credit to the Home of Peace. Show yourselves worthy of our choice.’
They mumbled some reply.
Then they walked up the staircase in a large office building. Presto Typewriting Agency—Every Variety of Typewriting—Unrivalled for Value—Speed—Accuracy.
‘My dear Herr Jauch, here are two young friends of ours who have already done good work for the Home. Herr Maack, Herr Kufalt. But you have already seen them both at our place.’
‘Why two? What am I to do with two? I want one, I told you. This is the sort of thing you always do. You think it’s only old Jauch; you can get round him all right.’
The short fat man with the shaven head, dotted all over with pimples, pustules and blackheads, fumed up and down.
‘Can they work? They don’t look as if they could. You wanted to get shot of them, eh? Now then, you—yes, I mean you—just sit down at the machine. Have you ever seen a machine like that? It’s a typewriter, did you know? Used for typing letters, understand? . . . Now then, carbon, normal spacing, take this down . . . God in Heaven above us, what a way to put the paper in! The sheet’s at least two millimetres crooked, and it’ll go on getting worse. Don’t you understand?’
‘Yes,’ whispered Kufalt.
‘“Yes,” he said, but he had no idea. Take this: “Hamburg, 23 June” . . . My dear Seidenzopf, what a touch! You can take him away, we want people who know their jobs. Now go on: “Dear Sir . . . ” What sort of “S” is that . . . ? It’s all shaky, you must strike the keys regularly. Typing ought to sound like machine-gun fire. Were you at the front? No, of course not, how should you know what machine-gun fire is like? My dear Herr Seidenzopf, take the man away with you. I don’t run a typewriting school, I need trained staff . . . Go on . . . “With reference to your esteemed favour of the third instant” . . . Oh God . . . ’
‘My dear Jauch . . . ! Will you please go into the typing room, gentlemen, and have a look round. Now listen, my dear Jauch, Herr Pastor Marcetus wishes . . . ’
‘What a pig!’ whispered Kufalt, short of breath.
