The Lucky Beggar

(1932)

His rise had been slow and difficult, year by year, trainee, third-class salesman, second-class salesman, first-class salesman. He was thirty-eight when he became head of section, at the end of twenty-two years of smiles, flexibility, stifled abuse, bowing and scraping and being kicked in the teeth. His fall was as fast as you like: notice at the earliest possible date. ‘It’s the times, Herr Möcke … You understand … We need to tighten our belts, and your expensive supervisor’s salary, Herr Möcke …’

He wouldn’t have been able to tell you how he made it home. But there was the little house in the sun, a proper little rental home in the garden suburb, one thousand down payment to the co-op and sixty-five marks per month. The roses in the front garden stood there like little dolls, he had bought them himself, planted them, tended them, the windows flashed like mirrors, the curtains moved just a little. Herr Möcke woke up when he saw it, then he heaved a sigh and went in to tell Linni the news.

They were luckier than tens of thousands of others, the Möckes. They had no children, and the furnishings had been paid off a year ago, more. Also, Möcke would be quickly re-employed, perhaps as a first-class salesman, certainly second-, he was known in the trade and he was no slouch. Then came the day he was let go, the last pay day, and Kunze the head of personnel said: ‘Now, Möcke, goodbye but not farewell. I hope we’ll see each other very soon.’

Possibly that was just an expression meant to console, but equally possible that it meant something. Three days later, when Möcke went to collect his unemployment along with another gentleman from the settlement, he was convinced there was something behind it. His colleague Wrede had always been a nasty piece of work.

‘You know, Herr Möcke,’ said the other gentleman, ‘do you think I’m still paying my rent? Am I hell! I’m just paying down my co-op money. A thousand marks means I have a long time here yet.’

‘My situation is different,’ said Möcke carefully. ‘I have fallen victim to a regrettable intrigue. But the matter is about to be resolved. Our head of personnel has given me assurances …’

‘Oh, so you think you’ll find work again, do you?’ said the other. ‘Everyone thinks that. You’re pushing forty, you’ll never get another job as long as you live. It’s just obvious. Think about it, you cost almost twice as much to employ as a nineteen-year-old.’

‘Certain promises have been made me …’ Herr Möcke persisted.

Then he’s in with the grey tide of the unemployed, washing past the counters, he’s in there for weeks and months. It’s very hard to keep yourself apart from such a tide. Herr Möcke feels nothing less than obliged to, he has been made certain promises. Herr Kunze will be writing to him any day now. In the meantime, they are tightening their belts. Ninety-six marks of unemployment benefit, sixty-five marks in rent, but he has to keep it up, he mustn’t do anything to harm his reputation, so that, when Herr Kunze comes to make his checks …

Linni has been hearing about Herr Kunze for four months now, Linni doesn’t have to join the grey tide of the unemployed twice a week at the office where they teach her husband to hope, Linni just says: ‘Pah, your Kunze’s never going to write to you …’

Möcke gives Linni a look and he leaves the room, he goes downstairs into the garden, and he stands there and looks around: a damp, autumnal garden is a fairly dismal kind of place, a grey sky, a rough wind, dismal. Linni’s right, thinks Möcke. Kunze really could have written. And, ten minutes later: I know, I’ll write to Kunze!

A big decision, a heroic decision but, all in all, Columbus’s egg. That evening Herr Möcke sits down and writes to Herr Kunze, to ask him for an appointment. As he is leaving the house the next morning with the fateful letter, the doorbell happens to ring, Möcke opens without looking to see who’s there – and he sees a beggar.

It’s like this: earlier, when Möcke still had his job, he would often open the door to beggars, and when the man went through his spiel about being out of work and out of luck, Herr Möcke would reply curtly: ‘Sorry, mate, I’m out of work myself.’ Then, when he actually did lose his job, he would lie awake at night, thinking: I should never have said that. It’s my own fault. It’s not just that nasty piece of work Wrede, I brought it on myself with my foolish talk. Since that time, the Möckes have stopped opening the door to beggars. They look through the peephole to see who’s rung the bell.

This time, though, with his thoughts on his letter, Herr Möcke didn’t check. The beggar is standing in front of him, and the beggar says: ‘Good morning, doctor, sir, just a small consideration.’

Herr Möcke looks at the beggar, the beggar is a big, strongly built man with strong bones, he has a pale, smooth face with a little blond moustache, but above all he has quick, intense eyes. Herr Möcke stands there with his important letter in his hands, he’s sent so many beggars packing in his time …

‘Just a few pennies, doctor,’ says the man. ‘I’ll bring you luck. I’ve already brought luck to lots of fellows.’ Herr Möcke reaches into his pocket. ‘I’ll spit on your door three times, to make the spit run.’

‘There’s no need to do that,’ says Herr Möcke, but he gives the man ten pfennigs anyway.

The man spits on the door three times, and it runs. ‘You see, doctor, you’re in luck. But your wife’s not to wipe it off. I’ll come back and ask how it’s going,’ says the man, and heads off to the next bell. On his way to the post office, Möcke shakes his head vigorously about so much prejudice in the population. But at least it can’t hurt. And he drops his letter in the bag.

Once such a letter has been mailed, the sender may sometimes feel lighter, certain veils have been lifted. What actually had Kunze said to him? Nothing, consolation, soft soap – on the way to the labour exchange, everything looks different again. Well, Möcke waits, but he’s not really waiting, in between times he remembers the spitting beggar and he shakes his head again.

Well, at the end of five days of waiting, Möcke gets his letter: Kunze would be pleased to see his old friend Möcke in such and such a café at such and such a time. And now behold Möcke in his garden! Speaking to Linni! Opening the door to the beggar on the day of the rendezvous! Yes, it’s exactly on that day that the beggar pays his return visit.

‘Well, doctor,’ he says. ‘How are we doing now? Did it help or did it help?’

Herr Möcke smiles a thin smile, it’s all nonsense of course, it’s the most primitive superstition, but he replies with a smile that he’s about to find out this afternoon if it worked or not.

‘So what about it?’ asks the man with the strong bones. ‘Would you like me to spit again?’

Möcke looks at the man, he mustn’t allow himself to be overly compromised. ‘If you reckon it’ll do any good. I wouldn’t mind.’

‘That’ll be a mark, then, doctor,’ he says. ‘The last time was a kind of introductory offer. My spit always helps.’

Now Herr Möcke gets angry. ‘You want a mark, when I’m on the dole! You’re crazy! I won’t even entertain it. Get away from my door.’

Möcke goes back into his garden, he puts straw on his roses on account of the frost, to give himself something to do. He keeps sighing. Perhaps it was over-hasty of him, the man would probably have done it for fifty pfennigs …

Now then, a trip into the city, a café, these things don’t come cheap, and it turns out Kunze just wanted a chinwag with his old mucker and a chance to pour out his heart, things at work are so bad these days! But of course he’s thinking of Möcke, tomorrow morning he’ll take soundings, first-class salesman, why on earth not, he’ll write as soon as there’s an opening …

Möcke waits. There are no immediate openings, the thing is taking its time. Sometimes, when he goes for a walk, he runs into the big, raw-boned beggar. Herr Möcke walks past him, looking straight ahead. Perhaps the fellow spoiled everything with his absurd demand of one mark, who knows in this world.

The labour exchange. Picking up his dole money. The ever-rising tide. Oh, how stoutly his Pharisaic heart resists: I am not like these others, I have prospects, Kunze will write. Kunze doesn’t write. And finally Herr Möcke goes to a meeting of the unemployed, one might as well lend an ear. And it does him good to hear what demands they are putting forward. Herr Möcke smiles, he knows better, these things aren’t about to happen any time soon, but it does him good in his heart just to hear them being voiced.

Next to Herr Möcke sits the big, raw-boned beggar, and in his benign mood Herr Möcke says to him: ‘Fancy running into you here, when you’re meant to be so lucky.’

‘Of course I’m here,’ says the beggar, ‘that’s the whole point. If I was lucky for myself, I would hardly be lucky for others now, would I?’

Herr Möcke sits there, stunned, the man’s right really. And then after a while he asks him: ‘You haven’t been by for a long time, what about it?’

The man replies curtly: ‘This isn’t a spitting job any more, you’ve messed that up for yourself.’

Möcke doesn’t speak, Möcke broods, sometimes he listens to what the speaker on the platform is saying, but the demands don’t really rejoice him any more, he has a feeling as though his last chance has just, so to speak, gone begging. The beggar is merely silent.

Now, afterwards, after the meeting, they do get into conversation again. Was there nothing he could do any more? The doctor is waiting for a letter, but he’s been waiting for a long time. No, the beggar can’t help, Möcke’s lost his chance, but he does know of a woman: she’ll get you your letter! A little back and forth, whispers, up the road, down the road, she can do it, she’s fabulous, she’s done this for one fellow and that for another. Would he have a picture of his man Kunze, by any chance? No, well, it can be done without. She can do everything!

‘Expense?’

The beggar looks at him. ‘You’re running away again, doctor, aren’t you? Do you think a woman with gifts like that’d come cheap?’

No, no, Herr Möcke’s not running anywhere, he will listen to the beggar’s conditions perfectly calmly. He can always say no.

Of course he can. Well, because it’s the doctor, and because the doctor’s out of work, something in the vicinity of fifty marks, and if that isn’t cheap …

Now Möcke has stalked off again, he didn’t even say no. And he’s waiting again, same as before, and going to the labour exchange, and when spring comes round he leaves the ‘unemployed’ desk and goes over to ‘crisis’ because if they didn’t come through with a few marks, then he’d be forced to follow his friend’s example and stop paying rent.

And after Möcke has waited and pondered and resisted for long enough, he goes into the city again. He stands by the employees’ entrance to his old business, and waits for Herr Kunze to come out. Oh, what a nice surprise, to see old Möcke again! He’s been thinking about him such a lot, once or twice things were almost at the point, but each time there was a problem, but maybe in the next couple of weeks …

Möcke goes home, his head is reeling, he knows that things were almost at the point, but there was a problem. He knows what it was, too: the first time it was one mark, the second it was fifty.

Möcke takes fifty marks of his last, his very last iron reserve, and walks the streets, looking for his beggar. He spends four days looking for him. Things need doing in the garden, Linni’s cross with him, but Möcke’s only got one thing in his head, and it even pursues him into his dreams: how to get fifty marks to the beggar.

Because then, then everything will come out! He sees the store again, the clean, well-lighted place, the waxed floors, the merchandise on the shelves, the customers streaming in, he bows, he makes a sale – my, isn’t life sweet!

On the fifth day, Möcke runs into his beggar. He is confused, nervous, he can’t even speak properly. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘For that woman,’ he says. ‘You know what I need,’ he says. ‘Work …!’

Day after day Herr Möcke stands behind the dining room curtains. From there he can keep an eye on the steps, it could be an express letter, or a telegram. From morning till night he stands there waiting, at night he jumps up: ‘Wasn’t that someone at the door just now, Linni?’

But Linni doesn’t say anything, she’s crying, crying her eyes out. While Möcke waits and waits and waits …