Tales from the Underworld

by Hans Fallada

  Itzenplitz rubbed her reddening nose many times, disposed here and disposed there, took away (mostly), added on (not much), all the while I stood by the stove, making sarcastic comments. Finally, it was established that in the three months of its existence, our Christmas fund had soared to seven marks eighty-five pfennigs, provided the briquettes lasted us till the first. If they didn’t, then two-fifty would have to revert to the coal fund.

  We exchanged looks … But misfortunes rarely come singly, and so it was that in that moment of penury, Itzenplitz’s brain turned first to her mother-in-law, and then to Tutti and Hänschen, her niece and nephew. ‘I’ve always given something to Mama and the little ones for Christmas. I’ve got to, Mumm!’

  ‘Go ahead, by all means … but maybe you could tell me in a word, how?’

  Itzenplitz didn’t, but she did something inspired instead: she came to pick me up from work at the paper, and beguiled that old stick-in-the-mud of a Heber with conversation. I can still see him, with his long, curmudgeonly horse face, but with a real patch of red on the cheeks, leaning on the barrier in despatch, listening to Itzenplitz on the one cane chair, Itzenplitz in kid gloves and white blouse with red polka dots and pleated skirt and cheap and cheerful summer coat. And she was jabbering away nineteen to the dozen, a yackfest, a gossip. She gave him what he craved, she fed his desiccated old bachelor heart with gossip, she made things up non-stop, a name would fall and she came up with the most outrageous stories. She gossiped about people she’d never met, affianced them, broke them up again, it was a whirl and a gas, she populated the world with children, killed off elderly aunts, why, the cook for the Paradeisers—!

  And a sparkle came into Heber’s dead fish-eyes, his bony fist came down on the partition. ‘I always supposed that was the case! No, who would have thought it possible!’ And gently, almost imperceptibly, she quit the terrain of amours for that of money, the expensive new curtains at Spieckermann’s, how could they afford something like that, she certainly couldn’t, and Lesegangs were having difficulties as well, but thank God things at the paper seemed to be pretty robust, no wonder, given the quality of the management. ‘And we’re counting on you putting in a word for us with the boss, Herr Heber, regarding the Christmas bonus, you can do it, I know you can …’

  She sat there, drained, but in her eyes there was a halo of zeal and rapture and beseeching – and I couldn’t help it, I crept around behind her, and gave her a quick shoulder-rub to indicate my approval. But that dull old stick of a Heber of course wasn’t the least bit moved, he coughed like a sheep and, raising his voice and with a look at me, explained that of course he fully understood what was going on, and a trap needed to be baited, but we wouldn’t catch him out like that, and whoever wanted to get an earful was welcome to take his case directly to the boss, not that he would recommend it!

  It was a comprehensive humiliation. With wretched stammerings we slunk out of despatch, and I felt dreadfully sorry for Itzenplitz. For at least five minutes she didn’t say a word, just sniffled away to herself, that’s how crushed she was.

  But regardless of the scene just passed and the poor prospects of a bonus and the usual pre-Christmas gloom, it managed to snow for the first time that year, on 13 December. It was a proper dry, cold snow that fell on frozen ground and lay there, and of course we couldn’t help ourselves, we ran out into the blizzard.

  My God, the little old town! The gaslights made almost no impact on the falling snow, and on our own street the people ran around like pallid ghosts. But then when we got to Breite Straße, everything was splendidly lit up by the shop windows. And the first (electric) Christmas lights were on, and we pressed our faces against the glass and talked about this and pointed to that. ‘Look, wouldn’t that be perfect for us!’ (I think about ninety-seven per cent of what we saw would have been perfect for us.)

  And then there was Harland’s good old delicatessen, and we were picked up by a wave of exuberance, and we went in and bought half a pound of hazelnuts and half a pound of filberts and half a pound of Brazil nuts. ‘Just for a little bit of a Christmassy feeling at home. We don’t need a nutcracker, we can just open them in the door jamb.’ And then we got to Ranft’s bookshop, and there something wonderful met our eyes: Buddenbrooks for just two eighty-five …‘Look, Itzenplitz, I’m sure they cost twelve marks originally, and now they’re going for just two eighty-five, that’s a saving of nine marks fifteen … And I’m sure to be able to pick up some Christmas advertising!’ So we bought the Buddenbrooks, and then we came to Hänel’s department store and went in just to see what they might have for Mother and Tutti and Hänschen, and we bought Mother a pair of very warm black gloves (five marks fifty), and Tutti got a lovely big rubber ball for one mark, and lucky Hänschen got a roller (one mark ninety-five). And we were still on our wave, and I can still see Itzenplitz in the throng of shoppers standing in front of a mirror, and trying out a little lace collar on her coat with such an earnest and blissful expression on her face (such blissful earnestness!): ‘And you’re going to get me something for Christmas too, aren’t you, Mummchen, and maybe the collar won’t be there later – isn’t it dear?’

  It was still snowing as we wandered home arm in arm, her hand in the pocket of my overcoat entwined with mine, and we were festooned with parcels, just like any real Christmas shoppers. And we felt incredibly happy, and for sure the advertisers would take out space …

  But while Itzenplitz was frying the potatoes for our supper, I, a tidy, almost pedantically inclined sort of fellow, unpacked the parcels, and put all our purchases together, and then I popped all the packing paper in our little cooking stove that we called the Tiger, and it did full justice to its name. We were so happy and cheerful with our fried potatoes, and suddenly Itzenplitz jumped up and said: ‘Don’t be cross, Mumm, but I’ve just got to try on that sweet little collar again!’

  That was fine, but – where was the collar? We looked and looked …

  ‘Oh, golly, you can’t have burned it along with the wrapping paper!’

  ‘How could I have done that if we didn’t even buy it …’

  But she pulled the stove door open, and stared and stared at the embers (‘it was so dear!’), while I set off and barged into the department store that was just closing, and terrorized tired salespeople, and walked slowly, slowly home … And then we slunk around quiet and glum and wary of each other until it was bedtime …

  But there’s always another morning, and you wake up, and the snow’s twinkling and dazzling away under a clear blue winter sky. And the world is short one lace collar.

  ‘Just wait, darling, we’re going to buy ourselves stacks of collars in our lives …’

  ‘It would happen to us, we’re made of money, so we can send as many three-mark collars up the chimney as we like!’

  But now it was the 14th, and fourteen is twice my lucky number, and whether I got into work especially early or the old cleaning lady was running late, either way she was still there, old Frau Lenz, a real battleaxe with a face like one too, who had brought up nine children, I can’t imagine how, and all of them preferred to keep their old mother working for them than raising a finger for themselves.

  Old Frau Lenz told me in her spluttery voice how she had been given a big chocolate Santa Claus from the chocolate department at Hesse’s, where she also worked – ‘almost two feet high, probably hollow inside, but my grandchildren would have loved it! And I put it on the sideboard, and every day I’m happy to see it, and today as I’m dusting at home, I pick it up and if that wretched Friedel my youngest hasn’t started eating the back of that Santa Claus, so there’s just a little bit of his front side left … She’d propped him up against a vase, to keep him from falling over …’ She wheezed, spluttered, snorted with fury. ‘But wait, when I get my twenty marks Christmas money from Heber, she won’t get a single penny of it, even if she bangs on at me all week, so she won’t go to the dance …’

  To which I replied that my understanding was that
there wasn’t going to be any bonus money from Heber this year. And then old Frau Lenz, a barrel of gunpowder, a volcano, how she spluttered and spat! ‘Oh, I’ll show him, old misery guts! He’ll wish he’d never been born! No money for Christmas? Oh, leave it out, Herr Mumm! The boss won’t forgo one single glass of schnapps, with this so-called miserable economy! The old sot! And always the little people! Isn’t he just going to catch it!’

  And Heber caught it. There she stood, old Frau Lenz, scruffy and dingy and wrinkled and frightful to behold, and she let fly … The racket even drew Pressbold out of his hole, and, strange to relate, that same Pressbold who had left me high and dry, now that it was Frau Lenz who was laying into them, started to provide a chorus for her remarks: ‘I don’t think it’s right either, Heber …’ And: ‘I think Frau Lenz has got a point …’

  Until Heber, white with rage, had had all he could take: ‘Right, get out of here, the lot of you! Do I decide who gets paid a bonus here? You’re mad, all of you! But you wait, Mumm, I know you’re stirring things up, you’re to blame for all this …’ I didn’t hang around to hear any more. Another defeat. The outlook was dim …

  My report on our first Christmas together would be incomplete if I failed to mention children. When Itzenplitz and I talked about earlier Christmases in our lives, then it was always the festivities of our childhoods that were brought back to life. In time, they had rather merged into one, but no Christmas trees ever sparkled like the Christmas trees of yore – and I could tell Itzenplitz in detail about the time I got the puppet theatre, and then, a couple of years later, the lead figures for the Robinson Crusoe set …

  ‘It only really makes sense with children. I think we’ll be a bit lonely just the two of us …’ And Itzenplitz would look slowly about her, into the corners where the shadows lurked …

  And then we did get a child, just before Christmas. It was the 18th, the snow had given way to dirty slush, horrid piercing damp and dull, cloying fogs, days that refused to brighten. On one of those afternoons that were neither day nor night, we heard a little wailing outside the door of our flat that sounded almost like a child crying, and when Itzenplitz opened the door, there was something huddled on the doorstep half-dead with cold and damp: a cat, a small grey and white cat.

  I didn’t get to see the addition to our household till a couple of hours later, when I got home from one of my subscription walks. She was already warmed up and half-kempt, but there was no question that this little grey-white creature with a black mark over half its face was a real alley cat …‘Holy-Moly,’ said Itzenplitz. ‘She’s our little Holy-Moly …’

  There was no gainsaying that, she was spending the night on our sofa, and in the morning Itzenplitz would try and get hold of an old margarine crate from the shopkeeper, and some scraps of material for Holy-Moly (though such scraps were in short supply in as recent a household as ours) – well, and in short we had our child, and wouldn’t be quite so much all on our own as we thought.

  I woke up in the night, though, it must have been quite late, because the electric light was on, and a white shape stood perfectly still in its nightgown. ‘Itzenplitz,’ I called out. ‘Come back to bed, you’ll only catch cold …’ She indicated she wouldn’t return right away, and shortly after I got up and stood there beside her.

  ‘Look,’ she whispered. ‘Look at that!’ The little cat was awake. She wiped her head with her forearms, then put out a rosy pink tongue, and yawned and stretched. Itzenplitz watched with fascination. With two of her fingers she stroked the cat behind the ears.

  ‘Holy-Moly,’ she whispered. ‘Our very own Holy-Moly …’

  She looked at me.

  A man doesn’t forget that kind of thing. It was my Christmas and Easter and Whitsun and all the other red-letter days rolled into one.

  After the 18th it was the 19th, and so the days went on, and money remained scarce, and the newspaper advertising line didn’t keep what it promised, and our prospects were bleak. On the night of the 22nd, Itzenplitz began to enquire again whether Heber wasn’t showing some signs of maybe, and perhaps if he wasn’t, then whether I shouldn’t go and beard the big chief myself, and things couldn’t be allowed to just go on like this, someone should just tell us, one way or the other …

  On the 23rd, I slunk around Heber like a bridegroom round his young bride, but he didn’t betray any sign of anything at all, and was just as bony and fishy as he always was. And on the night of the 23rd, Itzenplitz and I had our first real quarrel, because I hadn’t said anything, and also because Holy-Moly had savaged our African violets, which we had been given by Frau Pressbold, so that there was not one left, and also Störtebeker had once again failed to deliver the Christmas tree support, and instead put Itzenplitz off with ‘tomorrow’.

  And tomorrow duly came, 24 December, Christmas Eve, and it looked like an ordinary, foggy, grey winter day, neither cold nor warm. At ten o’clock Heber went in to see the boss, and I sat and waited for him to come out, and while I waited I wrote some nonsense about the Christmas film showing in the Olympia, which was half-decent. Heber came out, looking just as fishy and bony as ever, and sat down on his chair, and said to me gruffly: ‘Mumm, you have to go over to Ladewig’s beds right away. He claims he ordered a quarter-page ad, and you billed him for a half. It seems you’re forever making these kinds of blunders …’

  And as I trotted off, I kept thinking: poor Itzenplitz … poor Itzenplitz … I felt completely crushed, we had five marks left, but I hadn’t ever really believed I was going to get this bonus. If you need something really desperately, you never get it. When I got to Ladewig’s it turned out that of course I was right, and in the end Ladewig remembered, and was decent enough to admit it. Then I dawdled back to the newspaper and told Heber, who said: ‘Well, didn’t I tell you. And those are the kind of people who try and set up in business … By the way, sign this receipt will you, I managed to talk the boss round after all …’

  Initially I felt I was blacking out, my head was in a total spin. And then everything brightened, looked somehow dazzling, and I felt like grabbing hold of the old haddock and giving him a smacker on each bony cheek. And then I grabbed the fifty-mark note, and called: ‘One minute, Herr Heber …’ and I sprinted, money in hand, down Breite Straße into Neuhäuser, across the church square, along Reepschläger Passage into Stadtrat-Hempelstraße, and I charged up the stairs and burst into our flat like a typhoon, and slammed the money down on the table, and yelled: ‘Make a list, Itzenplitz! And come get me at two!’ And I gave her a kiss and I turned on my heel, and I was back downstairs again and in a trice I was back at the paper, and that ornamental carp of a Heber couldn’t have got over his initial astonishment at my disappearance, because he was still mouthing away to himself: ‘I wish for one hour on Sunday I could be as stupid as you are all your life!’

  Then two o’clock came round, and Heber was gone, and she arrived. And this was the note she gave me, our final version, which she presented:

  for eating:

  1 duck.................................................................. 5.00

  red cabbage......................................................... 0.50

  apples.................................................................. 0.60

  nuts..................................................................... 2.00

  figs, dates, raisins, etc.......................................... 3.00

  sundries............................................................... 5.00 16.10

  for the tree:

  our tree............................................................... 1.00

  one doz. candles................................................. 0.60

  candle-holders..................................................... 0.75

  tinsel.................................................................... 0.50

  sparklers.............................................................. 0.25 3.10

  for Holy-
Moly:

  1 bucket of fresh sand......................................... 0.25

  1 herring.............................................................. 0.15 0.40

  for Mumm:

  1 pr gloves........................................................... 4.00

  cigarettes............................................................. 2.00

  1 shirt................................................................... 4.00

  1 tie...................................................................... 2.00

  something else.................................................... 2.00 14.00

  for Itzenplitz:

  1 lottery ticket..................................................... 1.00

  1 pr scissors......................................................... 2.50

  1 collar (lace)....................................................... 3.00

  1 shawl................................................................. 6.00

  1 shampoo and cut.............................................. 2.00 14.50

  Our Christmas:................................................... 48.10

  ‘I know,’ said Itzenplitz, going like a train, because Heber was back from lunch at four, and we had to have finished our shopping by then, ‘I know. It’s an awful lot of money to spend on food, but the duck will last us at least four days, and Christmas only comes round once a year. And I need a decent pair of scissors for my sewing, I really can’t go on using my nail scissors. And the prices are pretty up-to-date, and we’ll have seven marks left to keep us going till the first, which is one mark per day, which is plenty. I have to have sparklers for the tree, and I’m sorry I rate fifty pfennigs more than you, I suppose I could always forget about the lottery ticket, but I think you need to have something to hope for at Christmas as well, even though I’m sure we won’t win anything—’