Little Man, What Now?, Page 2

  Lammchen Morschel said nothing. She disengaged herself and sank gently onto a stair. All the strength had suddenly gone out of her legs. She sat and looked up at her young man. ‘Oh God!’ she said, ‘Sonny, would you really do that?’

  Her eyes lit up. She had dark blue eyes with a green tinge. And now they were fairly overflowing with light.

  As if all the Christmas trees of her life were glowing inside her, thought Pinneberg, so moved that he felt embarrassed.

  ‘Right you are then, Lammchen,’ he said. ‘Let’s get married. As soon as possible, eh?’

  ‘You don’t have to, Sonny. I can manage. But you’re right—it’d be better for our Shrimp to have a father.’

  “ ‘Our Shrimp”,’ said Johannes Pinneberg, ‘of course, our Shrimp.’

  He was quiet for a moment. He was struggling with himself. Should he tell her that his proposal had had nothing whatever to do with the Shrimp and everything to do with the fact that it was very unfair to have to wait three hours out on the street for his girl on a summer evening? But he didn’t tell her. Instead, he pleaded: ‘Do get up, please, Lammchen. The stairs are bound to be all dirty. Your best white skirt …’

  ‘Who cares? What do we care about any old skirts! I’m so happy. Johannes! Sonny!’ Now she was well and truly on her feet, and threw her arms around his neck again. And the house was good to them: out of the twenty sets of tenants who went in and out by these stairs not one person came by. Despite the fact that it was the early evening rush hour when the breadwinners were coming home and the housewives were running out for some forgotten ingredient for their evening meal. No one came by.

  Then Pinneberg broke free and said: ‘Surely we can be doing this upstairs now we’re engaged. Let’s go up.’

  Lammchen asked dubiously: ‘D’you want to come with me straight away? Wouldn’t it be better for me to prepare Father and Mother first? They don’t know anything about you.’

  ‘Best to get it over and done with,’ declared Pinneberg, still quite determined not to go onto the street. ‘Anyhow, they’re bound to be pleased, aren’t they?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said she, thoughtfully. ‘Mother will be. Very. But father, well, you know, he really likes getting a rise out of people, but he doesn’t mean it. You mustn’t take offence.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Pinneberg.

  Lammchen opened the door onto a little hall. A voice rang out from behind another door which was slightly ajar: ‘Emma! Come here! This minute!’

  ‘Just a moment, Mother,’ called Emma Morschel. ‘I’m just taking off my shoes.’

  She took Pinneberg by the hand and led him on tiptoe into a little room with two beds in it which looked out into the yard.

  ‘Put your things down there. Yes, that’s my bed. That’s where I sleep. Mother sleeps in the other bed. Father and Karl sleep across there, in the big bedroom. Now come with me. Wait a minute, your hair!’ She quickly ran a comb through the tangles.

  Both their hearts were beating hard. She took him by the hand, they crossed the hall and pushed open the kitchen door. A round-shouldered woman stood bent over the stove, frying something in a pan. Pinneberg saw a brown dress and a big blue apron.

  The woman did not look up. ‘Emma, run down into the cellar now and fetch me some briquettes. I can ask Karl till the cows come home …’

  ‘Mother,’ said Emma, ‘This is my friend Johannes Pinneberg from Ducherow. We want to get married.’

  The woman at the stove looked up. She had a brown face with a strong mouth, a sharp, dangerous mouth, a face with bright sharp eyes and thousands of wrinkles. An old working woman.

  The woman shot a sharp, angry glance at Pinneberg. Then she turned back to her potato-cakes.

  ‘Silly young fool,’ she said. ‘So now you’re bringing your blokes home, are you! Go and fetch me some coal. The fire’s nearly out.’

  ‘Mother,’ said Lammchen, trying to laugh, ‘he really does want to marry me.’

  ‘Get the coal, will you, girl!’ shouted the woman, working away with her fork.

  ‘Mother! …’

  The woman looked up. She said slowly, ‘Haven’t you gone yet? Do you want a slap on the face?’

  Lammchen gave Pinneberg’s hand a fleeting squeeze. Then she took up a basket and shouted, as cheerfully as she could ‘Back in a moment.’ Then the hall door slammed.

  Pinneberg stood, abandoned, in the kitchen. He looked cautiously towards Mrs Morschel as if the very act of looking at her might irritate her, then across towards the window. There was nothing to be seen but a blue summer sky and a few chimneys.

  Mrs Morschel pushed the pan aside and fiddled with the stove rings. There was a lot of clanging and clanking. She prodded the fire with the poker, muttering to herself.

  ‘Excuse me …?’ asked Pinneberg politely.

  These were the first words he spoke at the Morschels. He shouldn’t have said anything, for the woman descended on him like a vulture. In one hand she held the poker, in the other the fork she had been turning the potato-cakes with, but that wasn’t the worst, despite the way she was brandishing them. Her face was worse, with all the wrinkles twitching and leaping; worse still were her cruel and angry eyes.

  ‘If you bring shame on my girl!’ she cried, beside herself with rage.

  Pinneberg took a step back. ‘But I do want to marry Emma, Mrs Morschel,’ he said nervously.

  ‘You think I don’t know what’s up,’ pursued the woman undeterred. ‘I’ve stood here for two weeks and waited. I’ve thought: she’s going to tell me something. I’ve thought: soon she’s going to bring me the fellow. I’ve been sitting here waiting.’ She drew breath. ‘She’s a good girl. You man, you, my Emma’s not some piece of dirt for you to play with. She’s always been cheerful. She’s never said a cross word to me—Do you mean to bring shame on her?’

  ‘No, no,’ whispered Pinneberg nervously.

  ‘Oh yes, you do,’ shrieked Mrs Pinneberg. ‘You do. For two weeks I’ve been standing here and waiting for her sanitary towels to put in the wash, and nothing. How did you do it?’ Pinneberg had no reply.

  ‘We’re young people,’ he said softly.

  She was still angry: ‘You … what sort of a person are you to get my girl to do that!’ Then she began muttering to herself again: ‘Pigs, all you men are pigs. Ugh.’

  ‘We’ll be married in as short a time as it takes to get the papers,’ explained Pinneberg.

  Frau Morschel had gone back to the stove. The fat was spitting. ‘What are you anyway? Can you afford to marry?’

  ‘I’m a book-keeper. In a grain merchants.’

  ‘So you work in an office?’

  ‘Yes’

  ‘I’d have preferred a man from the shop floor. What do you earn then?’

  ‘A hundred and eighty marks.’

  ‘After deductions?’

  ‘Before.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said the woman. ‘It’s not too much. My daughter should stay the down-to-earth girl she is.’ And then, flaring up: ‘And don’t think we’ve anything to give her. We’re working-class people and we don’t do that kind of thing. She’s only got the bits of linen she’s bought herself.’

  ‘It’s not necessary,’ said Pinneberg.

  Suddenly the woman flared up again: ‘You haven’t anything either, have you? You don’t look the thrifty kind. No one who goes around in a suit like that has money left over.’

  Lammchen’s arrival with the coal spared Pinneberg the necessity of confessing that Mrs Morschel had about hit the mark with her comment. Lammchen was in the best of moods. ‘Has she eaten you alive, you poor boy?’ she asked. ‘Mother’s a real tea-kettle, always boiling over.’

  ‘Don’t cheek me, you young scallywag,’ scolded the old lady. ‘Or you’ll get that slap after all. Go into the bedroom and have a kiss and cuddle. I want to talk to father alone first.’

  ‘Well, have you asked my fiancé whether he likes potato-cakes? Today’s our engagement day.’
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br />   ‘Get along with you!’ said Frau Morschel. ‘And don’t lock the door. I want to be able to keep an eye on the pair of you and see you’re not getting up to anything.’

  They sat facing each other across the table on the little white chairs.

  ‘Mother’s just an ordinary working woman,’ said Lammchen. ‘She has a sharp tongue but she doesn’t mean it.’

  ‘Oh, she meant it all right,’ said Pinneberg, grinning. ‘D’you realize your mother knows what the doctor told us today?’

  ‘Of course she knows. Mother always knows everything. I believe she liked you.’

  ‘Oh, come on! It didn’t sound like it.’

  ‘Mother’s like that. She’s always telling people off. I don’t notice it any more.’

  They were silent for a moment, sitting opposite each other like good children, their hands outstretched on the little table.

  ‘We’ll have to buy rings,’ reflected Pinneberg.

  ‘Heavens, yes,’ exclaimed Lammchen. ‘Tell me, what kind do you like best: shiny or matt?’

  ‘Matt!’ he said.

  ‘Me too, me too!’ she cried. ‘I believe we’ve got the same tastes in everything. That’s great. What will they cost?’

  ‘I don’t know. Thirty marks?’

  ‘As much as that?’

  ‘Will we have gold ones?’

  ‘Of course we’ll have gold ones. Let’s take measurements.’

  He moved over to her. They took a length of cotton, but it wasn’t easy. Either it cut into them or it was too loose.

  ‘Looking at hands brings strife,’ said Lammchen.

  ‘But I’m not looking at them,’ he said. ‘I’m kissing them. I’m kissing your hands, Lammchen.’

  A sharp knuckle rapped on the door. ‘Come out. Father is here.’

  ‘Right away,’ said Lammchen, and slid out of his arms.

  ‘Quick, let’s tidy ourselves. Father’s always quick to make remarks.’

  ‘What’s he like, then?’

  ‘Oh God, you’ll see soon enough. It’s neither here nor there anyhow. It’s me you’re marrying. Father and Mother don’t come into it.’

  ‘The Shrimp comes into it.’

  ‘Oh yes, the Shrimp. Nice sensible parents he’s going to have. Can’t even sit properly for a quarter of an hour …’ At the kitchen table sat a tall man in grey trousers, grey waistcoat and white singlet, without a jacket or a collar and wearing slippers. A sallow wrinkled face, small sharp eyes behind drooping spectacles, grey moustache and almost white beard.

  He was reading the Social Democratic Volksstimme, but when Pinneberg and Emma came in he let it drop and surveyed the young man.

  ‘So you’re the young fellow that wants to marry my daughter? Pleased to meet you. Sit down. You’ll soon change your tune.’

  ‘What?’ asked Pinneberg.

  Lammchen had put on an apron to help her mother. Mrs Morschel said crossly: ‘Where’s that boy got to again? The potato-cakes are getting hard.’

  ‘Overtime,’ said Mr Morschel laconically. And then, winking at Pinneberg: ‘You do overtime too, sometimes, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pinneberg. ‘Quite often.’

  ‘But without pay …’

  ‘I’m afraid so. The boss says …’

  Mr Morschel wasn’t interested in what the boss said. ‘There, you see, that’s why I’d prefer a working man for my daughter. When my Karl does overtime he gets paid for it.’

  ‘Mr Kleinholz says …’ began Pinneberg again.

  ‘What the employers say, young man—we’ve heard it all before,’ declared Mr Morschel. ‘And we’re not interested. All we’re interested in is what they do. There must be a wage agreement in your place, eh?’

  ‘I believe so,’ said Pinneberg.

  ‘Believe! Belief’s a question of religion, and a working man has no truck with that. I’m sure you have a wage agreement. And it says that overtime has to be paid. How come I end up with a son-in-law who isn’t paid overtime?’

  Pinneberg shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Because you’re not organized, you white-collar workers,’ explained Mr Morschel. ‘Because you don’t stick together; you’ve got no solidarity. So they can push you around just as they like.’

  ‘I’m organized,’ said Pinneberg resentfully. ‘I’m in a union.’

  ‘Emma! Mother! Our young man is in a union? Who would have thought it! So natty and in a union.’ Morschel senior turned his head to one side, and surveyed his future son-in-law with half-closed eyes. ‘And what’s your union called, my lad? Out with it!’

  ‘Clerical, Office and Professional Employees Association of Germany,’ said Pinneberg, getting crosser and crosser.

  At this Mr Morschel almost doubled up with laughter.

  ‘The COPEA! Mother, Emma, hold me up! Our young man’s a boss’s lap-dog. Call that a union? Doesn’t know which side it’s on. The bosses have got it in their pocket. God, what a joke.’

  ‘Hold on, just a minute’ cried Pinneberg furiously. ‘We’re not lap-dogs. We’re not financed by the bosses. We pay our own dues.’

  ‘Oh yes, and to whom? A bunch of stooges. Oh Emma, you picked a right one there. The COPEA! What a lap-dog!’

  Pinneberg looked over at Lammchen for support, but Lammchen wasn’t looking his way. Perhaps she was used it, but that didn’t make it any less of an ordeal for him.

  ‘I hear you white-collar workers think you’re a cut above us working men.’

  ‘That’s not what I think.’

  ‘Oh yes, you do. And why? Because you give your boss not just a week but a whole month’s grace before he has to pay you. Because you do unpaid overtime, because you take less than the agreed wage, because you never strike, because you’re always the blacklegs.’

  ‘It’s not just to do with money,’ said Pinneberg. ‘We think differently from most working men. We have different needs …’

  ‘You think differently! You don’t. You think just like a proletarian.’

  ‘I don’t believe it’s so,’ said Pinneberg. ‘Take me, for example.…’

  ‘Yes, take you for example,’ said Morschel, with a mean smirk on his face. ‘You helped yourself to an advance, didn’t you?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ asked Pinneberg, confused. ‘An advance?’

  ‘Yes, on Emma.’ The man’s smirk widened. ‘Not very nice, sir. And a very proletarian habit.’

  ‘I …’ began Pinneberg, growing very red. He wished he could slam the doors and roar: ‘Oh, go to hell all of you …!’

  But Mrs Morschel said sharply: ‘Now you be quiet, Father, and stop baiting people. That’s all settled. It’s none of your business.’

  ‘Here comes Karl,’ called Lammchen, as the door banged outside.

  ‘Well let’s have the food, woman,’ said Morschel. ‘And I am right, son-in-law, you ask your pastor. It’s not nice.’

  A young man came in, but young only in years; in appearance he was totally un-young; even more sallow and distempered than the old man. He growled ‘Evening’, and taking no notice at all of the guest proceeded to take off jacket and waistcoat, then his shirt. Pinneberg watched with growing amazement.

  ‘Been doing overtime?’ asked the old man.

  Karl Morschel growled something inaudible.

  ‘Leave off cleaning up for now, Karl,’ said Mrs Morschel. ‘Come and eat.’

  But Karl had the tap already running, and had begun washing himself very thoroughly. He was naked from the hips up. Pinneberg felt a little embarrassed on account of Lammchen. But she didn’t seem to mind; that was the way things were, to her.

  It wasn’t the way things were to Pinneberg: the ugly earthenware plates, all chipped and stained, the half-cold potato cakes which tasted of onions, the pickled gherkins, the lukewarm bottled beer, which was only put out for the men; and on top of all that this miserable kitchen, and Karl, washing …

  Karl sat down at the table and said disagreeably, ‘I need a beer.’


  ‘This is Emma’s fiancé,’ explained Mrs Morschel. ‘They’re getting married soon.’

  ‘Oh, so she’s landed one after all,’ said Karl. ‘A bourgeois, I see. A proletarian isn’t good enough for her.’

  ‘See what I mean,’ said father Morschel, highly satisfied.

  ‘You’d better pay your keep before you open your mouth here,’ declared Mrs Morschel.

  ‘I don’t see what you mean,’ said Karl sourly to his father. ‘I’d rather have a real bourgeois than you social fascists.’

  ‘Social fascists!’ retorted the old man angrily. ‘I’d like to know who’s the fascist here, you Soviet slave.’

  ‘Oh, so we’re the slaves? What happened to the Social Democrats’ promise to build bonny babies, not battle-cruisers, then?’

  Pinneberg listened with a certain satisfaction. What the old man had been handing out to him he was now getting back from his son with interest. But it didn’t improve the taste of the potato-cakes; it wasn’t a nice dinner; he had imagined his engagement party quite differently.

  A NIGHT-TIME CHAT ABOUT LOVE AND MONEY

  Pinneberg had let his train go without him; he could get one at four in the morning and still be at work in time.

  The couple were sitting in the dark kitchen. Mr Morschel was asleep in one room, Mrs Morschel in the other. Karl had gone to a Communist Party meeting.

  They had drawn two kitchen chairs up to each other and were sitting with their backs to the cold stove. The door to the little kitchen balcony was open and the wind was gently moving the thin curtain over the door. Outside, above the hot courtyard full of the din of radios, was the night sky, dark, with very pale stars.

  ‘What I would like,’ said Pinneberg softly, squeezing Lammchen’s hand, ‘would be to have somewhere nice. I mean,’ he tried to describe it, ‘somewhere bright, with white curtains, and as clean as clean.’

  ‘I know,’ said Lammchen. ‘It must be awful for you in our house, not being used to it.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that, Lammchen.’

  ‘Yes you did. And why shouldn’t you say so? It is awful. Karl and Father always rowing, Father and Mother always quarrelling, Karl and Father always trying to diddle her over the housekeeping money, Mother short-changing them over the meals. It’s awful, awful.’