Read Online Little Man, What Now? by Hans Fallada - Free Book Online

said, “You must think it over, Mr Pinneberg.” And I would have thought it over, but by an unlucky chance Mr Kleinholz came into the shop that very day, and he noticed I was worked up, and got me to tell him all about it, and then he invited me to his house in the evening. We drank cognac and beer, and when I got home that night I had been taken on as book-keeper at a hundred and eighty marks. And knowing hardly anything about proper book-keeping at all.’
    ‘Oh, Sonny. And your other boss: Bergmann? What did he say?’
    ‘He was upset. He tried to talk me out of it. He kept saying: “Take it back, Pinneberg. Don’t rush to your doom with your eyes open. How can you think of marrying that schicksa when you can see the memme’s driving the father to drink, and the schicksa is worse than the memme?” ’
    ‘Did your boss really speak to you like that?’
    ‘Oh yes, there are still a lot of real old-fashioned Jews around here. They’re proud to be Jewish. I’ve often heard old Bergmann say: “Don’t be so nasty, you’re a Jew!” ’
    ‘I’m not so keen on Jews,’ said Lammchen. ‘What did he mean about the daughter?’
    ‘Ah, you may well ask; that was the snag. I’d lived in Ducherow for four years and never knew that Kleinholz was dead set on marrying off his daughter. The mother is bad enough, carping all day and slopping around in crochet cardigans, but the daughter: what a cow! Called Marie.’
    ‘And she’s the one you were meant to marry, you poor boy?’
    ‘I am meant to marry her, Lammchen! Kleinholz only employs unmarried men; there are three of us at the moment, but it’s me they’re gunning for the most.’
    ‘So how old’s this Marie?’
    ‘Dunno,’ he said shortly. ‘Yes, I do. Thirty-two. Or thirty-three. Anyway it’s neither here nor there because I’m not marrying her.’
    ‘Ah heavens, you poor boy,’ said Lammchen pityingly. ‘Do people really do that? Twenty-two and thirty-three?’
    ‘Of course they do,’ he said sourly, ‘quite frequently in fact. And if you ever want to make fun of me, just insist on me “telling you all” another time.’
    ‘I’m not making fun … But you must admit, Sonny, it does have its funny side. Is she a good match then?’
    ‘No, actually not,’ said Pinneberg. ‘The business isn’t bringing in much any more. Old Kleinholz drinks too much, and then he buys too dear and sells too cheap. The son will get the business,and he’s only ten. Marie will only get a few thousand marks if that, so that’s why nobody’s taking the bait.’
    ‘So that was it,’ said Lammchen. ‘That was what you didn’t want to tell me. And that was why you got married in dead secret with the car-hood up and your hand with the ring in your trouser pocket?’
    ‘Yes, that’s why. Oh God! Lammchen, if they found out that I was married, the women would turn him against me in a week, and I’d be out. And what then?’
    ‘Then you’d go back to Bergmanns.’
    ‘No chance! Look …’ He swallowed, but carried on: ‘… Bergmann foresaw the Kleinholz job would go wrong and he told me so. He said: “Pinneberg, you’ll come back to me! There’s nowhere else in Ducherow for you but Bergmanns. Nowhere. You’ll come back to me, Pinneberg, and I’ll take you back. But I’ll make you beg. You can hang around the Labour Exchange for a month at least and come begging to me for work. That sort of chutzpah has to be punished!” That’s how he talked, and I can’t go back to him. I can’t and I won’t.’
    ‘Not even if he was right? You know yourself he was right.’
    ‘Lammchen,’ he said, pleadingly. ‘Please, dear Lammchen, don’t ask me to do it. Yes, of course he was right and I was a silly ass, and it wouldn’t have done me any harm to carry the parcels. If you kept on asking me, I would go to him and he would take me. And then his wife would be there, and the other salesman, Mam-lock, who’s a fool, and they’d never let me forget