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

his dinner, and later gave him therequired lift with some cognac. Something like a family evening had then ensued: the boy, who was a misery, moaned and groaned in a corner, the women sat at the table sewing (for Marie’s trousseau), and Father read a newspaper, saying intermittently: ‘Mother, let’s have another one.’
    Whereupon Frau Kleinholz invariably said: ‘Father, think of the boy!’ and then poured a little more out of the bottle, or not, according to her husband’s condition.
    That was how this last Sunday had gone off, with everyone then going to bed around ten.
    Mrs Kleinholz woke at about eleven; it was dark in the room, and she listened. She heard her daughter Marie next door whimpering in her sleep, as she often did, the boy making the usual noises at the foot of the paternal bed; only Father’s snores were missing from the chorus.
    Mrs Kleinholz groped under her pillow; the front-door key was there. Mrs Kleinholz put on the light; her husband was not there. She got up. She went all through the house. She crossed the yard (the lavatory was in the yard). Not a sign. Finally she discovered that an office window was slightly open, and she had definitely shut it. She was always very definite about that kind of thing.
    Mrs Kleinholz was in a boiling, seething rage; quarter of a bottle of cognac, a flagon of beer and all for nothing! She put on a few clothes, threw her mauve quilted dressing-gown over the top, and went to seek her husband. No doubt he was in Bruhn’s pub at the corner, knocking back a drink.
    Kleinholz Grain Merchants, on Market Place, was a good old-fashioned firm. Emil was the third generation to possess it. It had grown into a sound, respected concern with three hundred customers of many years’ standing—farmers and estate-owners. When Emil Kleinholz said: ‘Franz, the cotton-seed flour is good,’ Franz didn’t ask for a content-analysis, he bought it, and lo! it was good.
    But that kind of business has one snag: it has to be watered with alcohol; it is by nature a thirsty business. An alcoholic business. Every cartload of potatoes, every consignment note, every settlement calls for beer, whisky, brandy. That doesn’t matter if there’s a kindly wife, a household that hangs together and is comfortable to be in, but it does matter if the wife nags.
    Mrs Emilie Kleinholz had always nagged. She knew it was a mistake, but Emilie was jealous. She had married a handsome man, a prosperous man; when she was Miss Nobody with next to nothing, she had wrested him away from all the others. Now she bared her teeth over him; after thirty-four years of marriage she was still fighting for him as she did on the first day.
    She slopped along in her slippers and dressing-gown to the corner, to Bruhn’s. Her husband was not there. She could have asked politely whether he had been there, but that wasn’t in her nature; she heaped reproaches on the barman: they were scoundrels to give drink to drunkards; she was going to lodge a complaint, it was incitement to drunkenness.
    Old man Bruhn himself, with his big beard, led her out of the bar; she danced a jig with fury beside the huge man, but his was a firm and steady grip.
    ‘There we are, young lady,’ he said.
    And there she was, outside. It was a typical small-town market place, with cobblestones, two-storied houses, some gabled, some flat-fronted, but all with curtains closed and all dark. Only the gas-lamps flickered as they swung. Should she go home now? What a fool that would make her look! Emil would mock her for days afterwards if she had gone out to look for him and not found him. She’d have to find him now. However good the booze was, and however drunken the company, she’d drag him away. However much fun he was having.
    Fun! Suddenly she knew: there’s dancing at the Tivoli this evening; that’s where Emil will be.
    That’s where he is! There!
    And just as she was, in her slippers and dressing-gown, she walked half-way across town