Tales from the Underworld

by Hans Fallada

  ‘What’s the “something else”?’ I broke in.

  ‘Oh, Mumm, that’s just a little tiny thing I’ve got up my sleeve for you!’

  ‘Well then I want two marks for “something else” too,’ I said gruffly.

  ‘Oh dear, then we’ll be down to five marks, and what if the gas man comes, and then I’m all of two-fifty ahead of you! And it’s really not necessary, I’m so happy about our Christmas!’

  ‘But I insist,’ I insisted.

  And then Itzenplitz went and got old Frau Lenz, who promised to hold the fort till four o’clock, and a pretty good stand-in she made too. Anyway, who on earth was going to call on the afternoon of the 24th?

  We raced off anyway, and of course all the prices were a bit off, my shirt cost seven marks, so we forgot about the tie, and we found gloves that were one mark less. Itzenplitz found a lovely shawl in red and white and blue in a sort of crinkly silky stuff. And we found a collar that was exactly the match of the one we’d burned! The duck in Harland’s high-class delicatessen weighed four and a quarter pounds and came to five marks forty-five, but that was some duck!

  Of course we didn’t manage everything by four, but we agreed that I was to run back to the paper so Heber didn’t find me gone, and at half past four I was to ask him to let me go early. In the meantime, Itzenplitz was going to get her shampoo and cut, and afterwards we would finish the shopping together.

  I was back at the paper at five to four, and lo and behold, Frau Lenz had taken in an engagement announcement for nine marks eighty (was there nothing the woman couldn’t do), and when Heber came in, I nagged him till he forked out my ninety-eight pfennigs commission. He couldn’t believe I needed money again only minutes after getting my bonus, but I must say he honoured the true festive spirit when he gave me a whole mark.

  A little after five he did finally let me go, and I raced round to Steinmetzstrasße, and I found poor Unger at home, who had cancelled his engagement just three weeks before and had asked for his presents back, and was in an awful state. We came to terms, and I bought the little gold chain with the aquamarine pendant for three marks down (two marks of ‘something else’ and one of engagement royalty), plus fifteen weekly instalments of one mark, payable from 1 January.

  Now if I’d expected to find Itzenplitz waiting for me outside the hairdresser’s, I was wrong. It seemed all the girls and women in the world were set on getting their hair done today. But I wasn’t annoyed, in spite of standing around with wet feet, when she came out with her hair a mob of corkscrew curls and little ringlets, and we plunged straight back into the Christmas shopping, me with the aquamarine pendant in my pocket over my heart.

  Then we were home again, and it had been dark for ages, and I was handed the bucket, and I raced off again to the building materials for sand, and the manager was not happy to be faced with such a major order at a quarter to seven. When I got home, Itzenplitz was in despair. Störtebeker still hadn’t come round with his tree support, even though we could hear him fossicking around next door so he was at least home.

  Hand in hand we crept across the landing and knocked on his door, heard him tossing and turning, heard snores, and opened the door: there was a lit candle in one empty bottle, while Klaus Störtebeker seemed to have passed out halfway through another. We were very much afraid of him, but we crept into his room like a couple of Red Indians, looking for the base. There wasn’t much there, and certainly no sign of the base. With typical female obstinacy Itzenplitz was just pulling open a drawer, when there was a groan from the bed: ‘What’re you doing, you young pups … base for your Christmas tree? Tomorrow, thassa promise!’ And he was off again.

  At five to seven I was running into town again, and at Günther’s hardware store they were out of Christmas tree bases, and at Mamlock’s the shutters clattered down in my face.

  At ten past seven I was home, empty-handed, and there, upright in a sand bucket – in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, in Holy-Moly’s bucket of cat sand – sumptuously draped with a white tablecloth, stood our little sparkling and gleaming tree.

  Wonderful, beautiful Christmas – and blow me if old Itzenplitz didn’t start blubbing like a baby when I gave her her aquamarine pendant. ‘It’s so much nicer than what I’ve got for you.’ Though I have to say, the lighter was lovely too. Then we stood there and watched as Holy-Moly laid into her herring, with plenty of cracking of bones and lugging and pulling this way and that, and then Itzenplitz said so quietly I could hardly hear her: ‘We’ll have more than Holy-Moly next year.’

  The Good Pasture on the Right

  (1934)

  It was on Thursday that Father got the registered letter. It took him quite a long time to open it and read it, and I could see how agitated he was. Then he sat there for a long time with his fingers clutched at his hair, staring at the letter as though he couldn’t understand what it said.

  ‘What’s in your letter, Father?’ asked Mother.

  Father didn’t answer. Then we went out into the fields as usual. We were ploughing some dung into the potatoes, but he didn’t say a thing all day. He had the letter in his jacket pocket, and so far as I could see he didn’t take it out once: he had probably understood what was in it by now.

  We ate dinner as usual, and supper too, the only difference being that Father was maybe even quieter than usual. I had my eyes on him, but there was no sign of anything being different. After supper, I went into the byre to see if the cows were thirsty, and Father came with me. He watched silently while Blösch, our best cow, put away almost three buckets of water. When he saw that, he sighed and said: ‘I wonder how we’re going to get our animals through the winter this time.’

  ‘There’s plenty of fodder for them on the Kruselin meadow,’ I said.

  ‘That’s true enough,’ said Father. ‘Will you come with me?’

  I went with him. We walked through the village. At the Fingers’ house I saw the farmer and his wife standing on the stoop, talking about something with Stark the wheelwright, but by the time we got level with them they disappeared. It might have been coincidence, but it didn’t seem so to me. Something was amiss, I felt it more and more keenly.

  At the Kleinschmidts’ I looked around for Martha, but she kept out of sight. I hardly ever see Martha on the street, she’s always busy doing something inside, even when it’s quite late. They’re just cottars, the Kleinschmidts, not farmers like ourselves, or the Fingers, but I go round there a lot just the same, I’ve got a soft spot for Martha.

  When we were through the village and coming up to the wood, Father kept going, and then I knew we were going to the Kruselin meadow. And when I thought about the registered letter coming in the morning, and the Fingers avoiding us on the street just now, then I knew quite a bit about what was going on, even if Father hadn’t said a word. I never would have thought the Fingers capable of something like that. The Kruselin meadow is theirs, but we’ve leased it from them pretty much since for ever. Not with contract and money and so forth, but we look after it, we turn it over and fertilize it, make sure the drainage ditches stay open, and we mow it. And half of what we cut is ours in return for our labour, and half is the Fingers’ because they own it. We put up a fence around it to keep out deer. We need the meadow for our farm, without it we could never get our cows through the winter, if we didn’t have hay from the ‘Kruselin meadow right’. The Fingers don’t need the meadow, they’ve got the ‘Kruselin meadow left’, and they get so much hay, they even sell it on. That’s why it’s so mean of the Fingers, and with the registered letter and all, when they live five houses away. But I know how these things go, and Father knew it too.

  We stood on the edge of the wood looking at the meadow. It was already fairly dark, and there was a ground fog, but we knew the meadow, so we knew what good fodder grew on it. We had no need to look at it more closely, but of course it was good to be looking at it at all. That was why Father had taken me along to go and see it.

  ‘Oh, dear,�
� said Father. ‘So is this really for the last time?’

  ‘Surely not,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do for feed,’ said Father, ignoring me. ‘We’ll have to slaughter at least half the cattle. But we can’t do that either, because then we won’t have enough dung.’

  ‘Is it supposed to happen right away?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, before the first mowing. It’s because we’ve got nothing in writing, so they don’t have to worry about giving us notice or anything. I should have had some written agreement, but of course that never occurs to you.’

  ‘It didn’t to me either,’ I agreed.

  Then we walked down from the wood’s edge to the meadow after all. It smelled fresh, a really good meadow, with lovely wild flowers in it, the animals love the hay from it. It was a shame to lose a meadow like that. We would never be able to cope, the farm would never be the same.

  ‘Mind, I’m not leaning on you, Jochen,’ said Father.

  ‘No, no,’ I agreed.

  ‘It’s just a question of whether you can bring yourself to do it.’

  ‘I don’t think I can,’ I said.

  ‘Is it on account of Martha?’

  ‘As well,’ I admitted. I hadn’t discussed her with Father, because she’s just a cottar’s daughter. Some things you don’t do. ‘But I think, even without Martha, Ella isn’t right for me.’

  ‘It’s up to you,’ said Father. ‘But just bear in mind you’ve got plenty of work to keep you busy all your days, and at night you’ll both be tired. You don’t have to spend that much time together.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ I said.

  Then we went home. It had got completely dark, Father was walking ahead of me, once or twice he heaved a deep sigh. I felt sorry for him, he’s getting on, and he put an awful lot of work into the farm. He really made a go of it, but if the good Kruselin meadow right were to go, then it was all for nothing. You can’t buy meadowland around here. We do what we can with serradilla, but if it’s a dry year and the serradilla fails, then we’ve got nowt. No, it was an awful blow, but however sorry I felt for him there was nothing I could do to get him out of it.

  In front of the pub, Father stopped. ‘You feel like dropping in for a bit, Jochen?’

  ‘Me?’ I asked. ‘With you?’

  ‘No, not tonight. But perhaps you ought to go. Here’s two marks for you.’

  ‘It won’t do any good, Father,’ I said. But I didn’t want to be disobliging, and so I went in. There was only Strasen in there – the fisherman – and the landlord. They were talking about what a dry spring it was turning out to be. It really wasn’t what I wanted to talk about at all, I had to keep thinking about the meadow and the serradilla on the dunes with no rain, but I kept my end up. And I was putting it away. It was about ten o’clock when I got up and paid. There was no change from two marks, I’d had eight shorts, a beer and a cigar. I was pretty raddled, but it didn’t help; I wasn’t about to do what Father wanted me to do.

  I didn’t go home, I went the back way to the Kleinschmidts’ and climbed over their fence. All the lights were out, and I rapped on Martha’s window.

  She was there in a trice. I said: ‘Can you come out for a bit?’ and she came right away.

  Martha is fully a head shorter than me, but I like her a lot. She has lovely ash-blonde hair, and not a new-fangled bob, but plaits. And then she has dark eyebrows and brown eyes, and her cheeks are always red; however much she does in the house, she never looks pale. She’s the best worker in the village, and her work is never shoddy, not ever.

  I told her all about it, and she listened to me calmly; it was as though she already knew everything. And of course she did – there’s no secrets in a village. She did know everything.

  We walked for a bit, and then we came to a stop, she was listening very quietly. Then we walked some more, till we were standing by the lake, and the water was plashing quietly among the rushes, and I was desperate for her to say something. I told her in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t going to do it, and that I would never lay a hand on Ella, but she didn’t say a word. I felt all the wind was taken out of my sails.

  I talked a bit more, but I saw there was no point, and then I stopped. We were sitting down on a rock, very close together, and suddenly I noticed she was crying. I’d never seen her cry before. First I tried to talk to her, then I just took her in my arms. She was wonderful to hold, she made you feel you were everything in the world to her, not just a silly farmer’s lad, but everything she wanted. We had never held each other like that, and then one thing led …

  The following Sunday we went to see the Fingers, Father, Mother and me. They were expecting us, maybe Mother had said we were coming, anyway everything seemed to have been sorted out, I didn’t need to say anything. There wasn’t any more talk of the Kruselin meadow being taken away. Afterwards, all six of us went to look at the animals, Ella too, and we went to stand in front of the pigs, our parents contrived to leave us alone.

  We were both there by the edge of the trough, looking over the low wall into the sty. The sow had farrowed overnight, there were ten little ones, and Ella reckoned they wouldn’t all pull through. While she was saying that, the old folks went off, and I saw we were alone. It didn’t feel good to be alone with her, but that didn’t matter, I was going to have to be alone with her an awful lot over the next thirty or forty years. Ella’s not a bad-looking piece, big and strong with breasts on her. She works hard too, but I knew from school how cold and greedy she can be, and a tongue on her; not a good word for anyone, not even her own parents.

  When we saw we were alone, we stood for a while very still on the edge of the trough, watching the sow suckling her piglets. After a bit I noticed Ella pushing her arm closer to mine, and a bit later she was pressing against my shoulder. Then I kissed her. Kissing her wasn’t so bad, she had a nice full mouth and seemed to like it, she pressed herself against me harder. Then suddenly I could tell by her quick breathing that she was really keen on me, and that she was desperate to have me – and with that everything suddenly felt really awful, and I had to let go of her.

  She could tell right away what was going on, and for a long time she just stood there looking at me. But I didn’t dare look up at her till she asked me: ‘I suppose you’re thinking about Martha?’

  With that, I had to look at her, and I saw she wasn’t looking at me angrily or hungrily, but just unhappily that she had done something to hurt me. And so what I replied was: ‘No, I’m not.’ But I didn’t feel really sorry for her either.

  ‘Do you think you’ll ever be really fond of me?’ she asked, then.

  I thought of pretending I hadn’t heard, because she did ask in a very quiet voice, but I went ahead and said: ‘Yes. Sure I will,’ and then we walked out of the pigsty together, and for the rest of that day we were apart.

  The Fingers were in a hurry with the banns, and only a week later it was all settled. I expect tongues were wagging all over the village, but I didn’t pay them any mind. I didn’t care about Ella either: whenever I had to go past their house, I took care to be looking the other way. But I didn’t go around to Martha’s either, for many weeks I didn’t see her at all. I discovered I liked being all on my own.

  It was a difficult time, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I suppose I felt happiest in the bar. I let Father do the work, and I went in there in the mornings to drink. There was no one around, the landlord’s wife put out beer and spirits for me, the landlord was up in the fields. The flies hummed and buzzed, and there were always little puddles of beer and schnapps on the wooden tables. I felt at home there; previously, I’d never gone there much, it didn’t feel right. I couldn’t say if I did a lot of thinking in all the time I was sitting there alone. I don’t think I did, I just sat there and drank, and felt empty and somehow scorched inside.

  The first few times, Father or Mother would come to the pub and get me if I was gone for too long. Father was extremely gentle with me, he
never spoke to me in anger, even though he was sure to be ashamed that his son was now known to be a drunkard. Mother was more inclined to rebuke me. Nor did Father make me cut hay on the Kruselin meadow either. He could appreciate that I didn’t want to set eyes on it. He actually hired someone to work on it in my stead. But when I asked Father one time whether I couldn’t take off somewhere for good, after the honeymoon, after all we had the meadow, he shook his head and said no. No, I couldn’t do that.

  After a few weeks had passed – the wedding was coming ever closer – I could see that there was no getting round it: I was going to have to see Martha again. But she didn’t seem to be around anywhere, and finally I heard the landlord saying that she had left the village, and was working as a chambermaid in a hotel in town. I took some money, and went into town. I got in pretty late, and so I wasn’t able to see her that night. But in the morning she opened my door because I had rung three times for room service, as it said on the card – and there she was, and this time she looked as white as the paint on the ceiling.

  She was slumped against the door jamb, and after a while she said: ‘Oh, dear Jochen,’ with the tears pouring down her cheeks.

  I said hello, and I held out my hand, and we stood there like that for quite a while, hand in hand, and I could feel the spasms in my chest and in my throat, and if I’d been able to, I think I’d have cried as well. But I couldn’t.

  We stood there for a long time, and we heard the bells going off all over the hotel lots of times, but she didn’t move. What did we care. Finally she whispered: ‘Oh, Jochen, you shouldn’t have done that, you shouldn’t have followed me here,’ and I pulled her to me.