Free Little Man, What Now? by Hans Fallada Page A

the herring. ‘Carrying on like that.’
    ‘God damn it!’ he roared. ‘It’s time that girl was out of this house!’ he roared again.
    ‘You’re quite right, Father,’ his wife soothed him. ‘What else are you feeding those three hungry mouths for?’
    ‘Pinneberg’s the best. He’s the one,’ said the man of the house.
    ‘Of course. Just put the screws on him.’
    ‘Leave it to me,’ he said.
    And then this man, upon whom Pinneberg depended for his daily bread, went over to his office, carrying in his hands the fate of Pinneberg, Lammchen and the as-yet-unborn Shrimp.
    THE HARASSMENT BEGINS. THE NAZI LAUTERBACH, THE DEMON SCHULZ AND THE HUSBAND-IN-SECRET ARE ALL IN TROUBLE
    Lauterbach was the first of the employees to arrive at the office, at five to eight. It wasn’t out of a sense of duty, however, but out of boredom. This short, fat, flaxen-haired stump of a man with enormous hands had once been a farm bailiff, but, not liking the country, he had moved to town, to Emil Kleinholz’s in Ducherow. There he had become a sort of expert in seeds and fertilizers. The farmers were not overjoyed to see him get into the cart when they were delivering potatoes; he saw at once if the load wasn’t as specified, if white Silesians had been mixed in with the yellow Industrials. But he had his good side. Admittedly he never allowed himself to be bribed with brandy—he never drank brandy, because he had to protect the Aryan race from such decadent stimulants—so he never raised a glass and never took cigars. With a cry of ‘You oldcrook’ he would deal the farmers a cracking slap on the back and beat them down ten, fifteen, twenty per cent. But, and this was enough to placate them, he wore the swastika, he told them the best jokes about the Jews, he described the SA’s latest recruitment drives in Buhrkow and Lensahn, in short he was a real German, trustworthy, and the sworn enemy of Jews, wogs, reparations, Social Democrats and Commies. And that made up for everything.
    Lauterbach had only joined the Nazis out of boredom. It had turned out that Ducherow offered as little distraction as the country. He wasn’t interested in girls, and since the cinema did not start until eight and church was over by eleven there was a long gap between the two.
    The Nazis were not boring. He quickly joined the action, revealing himself as a young man with an unusually intelligent grasp of fighting, who used his hands (and whatever was in them) with an effectiveness that amounted almost to artistry. Lauterbach’s lust for life was finally satisfied: almost every Sunday, and on occasional weekday evenings too, he was able to have a fight.
    Lauterbach’s home was the office. There he had colleagues, the boss, the boss’s wife, workers, farmers: he could tell them all what had happened and what was going to happen. His talk spouted a continuous slow slush on the just and the unjust, enlivened by booms of laughter when he described how he had dealt with the friends of the USSR.
    There wasn’t anything of that nature to report today; however a new General Order had arrived for every SA squad leader—known to his troops as the ‘Gruf’—the contents of which were now handed on to Pinneberg, who appeared punctually at eight. SA members now had new insignia! ‘I think it’s a stroke of genius! Up till now we’ve only had our troop numbers. You know, Pinneberg, arabic numerals embroidered on the right collar-tab. Now we’ve got two-colour braid on the collar. It’s a stroke of genius. Now you can always tell even from behind what troop any SA man belongsto. Think of what it means in practice. Say we’re in a fight, and somebody’s working a man over, and I look at the collar …’
    ‘Amazing,’ agreed Pinneberg, sorting out delivery notes from Saturday. ‘Was Munich 387 536 a load from several places?’
    ‘The wagon of wheat? Yes. And just think, our Gruf now has a star on his left collar-tab.’
    ‘What’s a