Little Man, What Now? (30 page)

He had naturally forgotten to put on the alarm, but he just as naturally woke on the dot of seven, lit the fire and made his coffee, heating up his shaving water at the same time. He put on fresh underwear, made himself as clean and spruce as possible, then, whistling with all his might, at ten to eight he grabbed his flowers and marched out.

Behind his joy there had been the slight fear that the porter would object to letting him into the hospital so early, but no such obstacle arose. He simply said: ‘Maternity block’, and the porter answered automatically: ‘Last building straight ahead!’ Pinneberg smiled and the porter smiled back. It was a different sort of smile, but Pinneberg didn’t notice.

He floated with his gleaming yellow bush down the asphalt path between the hospital blocks, and all the sick and dying people in them didn’t concern him one jot.

Then he met a nurse again, and the nurse said: ‘This way, please!’ and he went through a white door and into a long room, and for a moment he had the sense of many women’s faces looking at him. And then he saw them no more, for directly in front of him was Lammchen, not in a bed, but on a stretcher, with a soft melting smile all over her face, and she whispered in a faraway voice, ‘Oh my Sonny!’

He bent over her very gently, and laid the stolen twigs on the coverlet, whispering ‘Oh Lammchen! It’s so good to see you again. Just to see you again.’ She slowly reached up to him, letting fall the nightie with the funny blue rings of letters from her tired white arms. They found their way round his neck and she whispered: ‘The Shrimp’s here. He’s really here. It’s a he, Sonny.’

He suddenly noticed that he was crying, in jerky sobs, and he said angrily: ‘Why haven’t these women given you a bed? I’m going to kick up an almighty fuss right now.’

‘There’s no bed free yet,’ whispered Lammchen. ‘I shall get one in an hour or two.’ She too was crying. ‘Darling Sonny, are you very happy? You mustn’t cry. It’s all over now.’

‘Was it bad?’ he asked. ‘Was it very bad? Did it make you scream?’

‘It’s over,’ she whispered. ‘I’m beginning to forget about it already. But we won’t let it happen again for a while, will we? Not for quite a while.’

A nurse said from the door: ‘Mr Pinneberg, come along now if you want to see your son.’ And Lammchen smiled and said: ‘Say hello to our Shrimp.’

He followed the nurse into a long narrow room. There were more nurses standing there looking at him, and he was not at all embarrassed that he had been crying and was still sobbing a little.

‘Well young man, how does it feel to be a father?’ asked a fat nurse with a deep bass voice.

‘You can’t ask him that yet!’ said another nurse. Why! it was that golden-blonde one who had put her arm round Lammchen so kindly yesterday. ‘He doesn’t know, he hasn’t even seen his son.’

Pinneberg nodded and laughed.

Then the door opened into a side room, and the nurse who had called him was standing on the threshold with a white bundle in her arms, and in the bundle was a very old, very red, very ugly, wrinkled face, with a pointed pear-shaped head, and it was squealing: sharply, piercingly, plaintively.

Then Pinneberg was suddenly wide awake, and all his sins came back to him, from the very earliest days: the masturbation, the little girls, that dose of clap, and how on four or five occasions he had been completely drunk.

And while the nurses were smiling at the ancient little
wizened dwarf, the fear rose higher and higher. Lammchen can’t have taken a proper look at him. Finally he could restrain himself no longer, and asked fearfully: ‘Tell me nurse, does he really look all right? Do all new-born babies look like that?’

‘Oh lord!’ exclaimed the dark nurse with the bass voice. ‘Now he doesn’t like the look of his son! You’re much too handsome for your father, little lad.’

But Pinneberg was still afraid. ‘Please, nurse, was any other child born here tonight? Yes? Please show it to me, so I know how they look.’

‘Would you believe it,’ said the blonde nurse. ‘He’s got the nicest babe in the whole ward and he doesn’t like him. Come here, have a look at this, young man.’ And she opened the door to the side room, and went in with Pinneberg, and there, sure enough, were sixty to eighty cots with dwarfs and gnomes in them, old and wrinkled, pale or red. Pinneberg looked anxiously at them, half reassured.

‘But my little boy has got such a pointed head,’ he said at last, hesitantly. ‘Please, nurse, that’s not water on the brain, is it?’

‘Water on the brain?’ said the nurse, and began to laugh. ‘You fathers are the limit! That’s how it’s meant to be: a baby’s head gets pressed together when he’s born, it grows out later. Now you go to your wife, but don’t stay too long.’

Casting one more glance at his son, Pinneberg went to Lammchen, who beamed at him, and whispered. ‘Isn’t our Shrimp sweet? Isn’t he beautiful?”

‘Yes, he is sweet,’ he whispered. ‘He is beautiful!’

THE LORDS OF CREATION HAVE CHILDREN AND LAMMCHEN EMBRACES PUTTBREESE

It was a Wednesday at the end of March. Holding a suitcase,
Pinneberg walked slowly, step by step, up through Alt-Moabit, and turned into the Little Tiergarten. He ought by rights at this time to be on his way to Mandels department store, but he’d taken another day off to fetch Lammchen from the hospital. In the Little Tiergarten he put down the case once again; there was plenty of time still, he didn’t have to be there till eight. He’d been up since half-past four; the room was in wonderful order, he had even waxed and polished the floor and changed the beds. It was right that everything should be bright and clean, now that a new life, a different life, was to begin. There would be a child at home. All must be sunshine from now on.

It was pretty in the Little Tiergarten now, the trees were turning green, the shrubs were green already: spring was coming early this year. Later it would be nicer still when Lammchen could take the Shrimp into the Big Tiergarten. It was farther away, but not so depressing as here, where despite the early hour unemployed people were already sitting around. Lammchen took that sort of thing so much to heart.

Up with the suitcase and onwards! Through the main door and past the fat porter, who at the word ‘Maternity’ answered quite automatically: ‘Straight ahead, last building.’

A few taxis drove by with men sitting in them: fathers, presumably, better off than he, who could afford to pick up their wives by car.

Maternity Block. He’d been right: that was where the cars were stopping. Should he get one? He stood there with his suitcase, not knowing what to do, it wasn’t a long walk home, but perhaps it was the proper thing to do, perhaps the nurses would think it was dreadful of him not to have a car.

Pinneberg stood and watched a taxi turning awkwardly into the small square, and the man called to the driver: ‘It’ll be a little while.’

‘No,’ said Pinneberg to himself, ‘No, it can’t be done. But it isn’t
right; it isn’t right at all.’

He went into the hall, put down his case and waited. The men who had arrived by car had already disappeared; they were no doubt long since with their wives. Pinneberg stood and waited. If he spoke to a nurse, she said hurriedly, ‘I’ll be with you in an instant!’ and ran off.

A feeling of bitterness began to rise up in Pinneberg. He knew he must be wrong, the nurses could have no idea who came with a car and who without. Or was that really so? Why otherwise should he have been left standing here? Was he less important than the others? Was his Lammchen less important? Oh no, what a lot of nonsense, he was an idiot to think like that, of course they didn’t make exceptions! But his pleasure was gone. He stood staring gloomily into space. Thus it began and thus it would go on; it was perfectly fruitless to believe that a new, brighter, sunnier life was beginning, things would be exactly as before. He and Lammchen were used to it, but wasn’t there going to be anything better for the Shrimp?

‘Nurse, please!’

‘In a moment. I’ve just got to …’

And she was off. Gone. Well, it didn’t matter, he’d got a day off, which he would like to have spent with Lammchen. He could wait until ten or eleven. What he wanted was neither here nor there; it was of no consequence.

‘Mr Pinneberg! You are Mr Pinneberg, aren’t you? The case, please. Where’s the key? Good. The best thing would be if you went over to the Administration Block straight away and got the papers. Meantime your wife can get dressed.’

‘All right,’ said Pinneberg, took his form and set off.

‘They’re going to give me a lot of hassle,’ he thought, in his ill-temper. But he was mistaken, everything went quite smoothly. He got his papers, signed something, and was ready.

And then it was back to the corridor. The cars were still
waiting. Suddenly he caught sight of Lammchen, still only partially dressed, running from one door to the next. She beamed, and waved to him: ‘Hello, Sonny love!’

And she was away. ‘Hello, Sonny love!’ Well it was still the same old Lammchen, anyway, however rotten life might be, she still beamed and waved and called ‘Hello Sonny’. And she couldn’t be feeling too good either, only two days ago she’d fainted when she got up.

So he stood, and waited. There were now several men waiting, that was evidently the way it was—he hadn’t been signalled out for neglect. Silly of them to have their cars wait so long, though; he wouldn’t want to throw his money away like that. The fathers talked among themselves:

‘It’s a good thing I’ve got my mother-in-law at home just now. She’ll do all the work for my wife,’ said one man.

‘We’ve got a maid. A woman can’t do it all, with a tiny baby, and so soon after giving birth.’

‘Permit me to disagree,’ said a fat man with glasses, emphatically. ‘It’s nothing for a healthy woman to give birth. It’s good for her. I said to my wife: of course I could get you some help, but it would only make you sluggish. You’ll get better quicker, the more you have to do.’

‘I’m not sure …’ said another, hesitantly.

‘No question! No question!’ insisted the spectacle-wearer. ‘I’ve heard that in the country they have children and then go straight out and harvest hay the next day. Any other way just makes them soft. I’m very against these hospitals. My wife’s been here nine days and the doctors still didn’t want to let her go. “I beg your pardon, Doctor,” I said. “She’s my wife, and I decide. How do you think my Germanic ancestors treated their women?” He went as red as a beetroot! You can be sure his ancestors weren’t Germanic.’

‘Was it a difficult birth?’

‘Difficult! My dear Sir! I tell you the doctors were with my wife
for five hours, they fetched the consultant at two in the morning.’

‘My wife tore so badly, I can tell you they had to put in seventeen stitches.’

‘My wife’s rather narrow too. This is the third, but she’s still narrow. Well, it does have its advantages of course. But the doctors said: “Dear lady, this time it went off all right, but next time …”

Another man asked: ‘Did you get a lot of printed matter to do with the baby?’

‘Terrible. Nothing but a nuisance. Prospectuses for prams, baby food, stout.’

‘Yes, I got a token for three bottles of stout.’

‘It’s supposed to be wonderful for the woman. It creates more milk.’

‘I wouldn’t give my wife any. It’s alcoholic, isn’t it?’

‘What d’you mean? Stout’s not alcoholic.’

‘Of course it is.’

‘Have you read the doctors’ testimonials for it in the prospectus?’

‘Oh, who pays attention to testimonials any more? My wife isn’t having any stout.’

‘I’m going to get my three bottles, and if my wife doesn’t want them, I’ll drink them. Saves buying a pint.’

The wives started coming.

A door opened here, another opened there, and they came out with oblong white parcels in their arms, three women, five women, seven women, all with a similar parcel, and all with similar rather soft melting smiles on their pale faces.

The men were silent.

They looked towards their wives. Their expressions, so confident a moment ago, became uncertain, they took a small step forward and stopped again. They had become strangers once again. All they had eyes for was their wives, and the oblong parcel in their
arms. They were all very embarrassed. Then suddenly they were very loudly and noisily concerned about them. ‘Well, hello. No, let me. You look wonderful! Completely recovered. Do you think I could carry him? Oh well, whatever you think. But I will take the case. Where is the case? Why’s it so light? Oh, of course, you’ve got it all on. How’s the walking going? A bit unsteady, eh? I’ve got a car outside. We’ll fetch it. That’ll be a surprise for the little chap, going by car, he’s never tried it. He won’t notice. Don’t say that. You hear so much these days about repressed childhood memories from the very earliest time, perhaps he’ll enjoy it …’

And meanwhile Pinneberg was standing beside his Lammchen, and all he said was: ‘You’re here again! I’ve got you back!’

‘My Sonny,’ she said, ‘Are you happy? Were they a bad ten days? Well, it’s all over and done with now. Oh, I’m so looking forward to our little home!’

‘It’s all ready, all in order,’ said he, glowing. ‘You’ll see. D’you want to walk, or shall I get a cab?’

‘Why a cab? I’m looking forward to walking in the fresh air. We’ve got time. You’ve got the day off, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, I’ve got today off.’

‘Well then, let’s go slowly. Take my arm.’

Pinneberg took her arm and they went out onto the little square in front of the Maternity Block where the cars were already clattering into action. And they went slowly, slowly, to the entrance, the cars whizzed by them, and they went step by step. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ thought Pinneberg, ‘I heard you talk. I know quite well it doesn’t matter not having any money.’

Then they passed the porter, and the porter didn’t even have time to say goodbye to them, as he had two people standing in front of him: a young man and a woman. It was plain from her figure what they wanted. And they heard the porter say: ‘Go to Reception first, please.’

‘They’re just beginning,’ said Pinneberg dreamily, ‘And we’ve
come through.’

It seemed quite odd that everything was going on here as before; fathers coming and waiting and ringing up and getting nervous, and then fetching their wives, every day, every hour, it was really odd. And then he looked down at Lammchen and said: ‘How slim you’ve got! Like a pine-tree.’