First Chapter Emil Helps to Shampoo

There!” said Frau Tischbein. “Now, just follow me with that pitcher of hot water.” She herself took another pitcher and the little blue jug with the liquid camomile soap and walked out of the kitchen into the living room. Emil took up his pitcher and followed his mother.

In the living room sat a woman with her head bent over the white washbowl. Her hair was undone and hung down like three pounds of wool. Emil’s mother poured the liquid camomile soap over the woman’s blonde hair and rubbed the strange head until it foamed.

“Is it too hot?” she said.

“Well, it will do,” replied the head.

“Oh, that’s Frau Bäckermeister Wirth. How do you do?” said Emil and shoved his pitcher under the washstand.

“You’re lucky, Emil. I hear you are going to Berlin,” remarked the head. And it sounded as if whoever was speaking was buried in whipped cream.

“At first he hardly wanted to go,” said his mother, rubbing busily at Frau Wirth’s head. “But why should a boy kill all his time here? He has never seen Berlin. And my sister Martha has invited us for a visit again and again. Her husband earns good money. He is in the post office. Inside work. Of course, I can’t go with him. Before the holidays there is so much to do. But he is big enough, and he must learn to look out for himself. And besides, my mother is meeting him at the Friedrich Strasse Station. They will pick him up at the flower stand.”

“He’s bound to like Berlin. It’s just made for children. We were there a year and half ago with the bowling club. Such a din! There are actually streets there that are just as bright at night as they are in the daytime. And the automobiles!” informed Frau Wirth from the depths of the washbowl.

“A good many foreign cars?” asked Emil.

“How should I know about that?” answered Frau Wirth, and had to sneeze. She’d got some soapsuds up her nose.

“There, run along and get yourself ready,” urged his mother. “I’ve laid out your good suit in the bedroom. Put it on so that we can eat as soon as I’ve done up Frau Wirth’s hair.”

“What shirt shall I wear?” Emil wanted to know.

“Everything is lying on the bed. And pull your stockings up carefully. And first wash yourself thoroughly. And put new laces in your shoes. Trot along, now!”

“Oh, heck!” remarked Emil, and strolled off.

When Frau Wirth had left, all beautifully waved and pleased with her looks in the mirror, Emil’s mother went into the bedroom and found her son wandering about dejectedly.

“Who invented best suits, anyway, can you tell me that?”

“No, I’m sorry. But why do you want to know?”

“Give me his address, and I’ll shoot the bird!”

“It’s too bad about you. Other children are unhappy because they haven’t any good suit. We all have our troubles.... Before I forget it—to-night be sure to ask Aunt Martha for a coat hanger and hang up your suit carefully. First it must be brushed, though. Don’t forget that. And in the morning you can wear your sweater again and this old robber’s jacket. Now, what else? The suitcase is packed. The flowers for Aunt Martha are done up. The money for Grandmother I’ll give you later. And now we’ll eat. Come, young man!”

Frau Tischbein put her arm around Emil’s shoulder and steered him toward the kitchen. There was macaroni with ham and grated Parmesan cheese. Emil ate like a farmhand. Only once in a while he sat back and looked over at his mother as if he feared she might think he had too good an appetite when he was going away so soon.

“And send me a card right away. I put one where you can find it in the suitcase, on top.”

“Sure thing,” said Emil, and scraped a bit of macaroni off his knee as quietly as possible. Fortunately his mother didn’t notice anything.

“Give them all my love. And keep your eyes open. In Berlin things are very different from Neustadt. On Sunday you will go with Uncle Robert to the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. And remember your manners, so that people won’t think that we don’t know how to behave.”

“You can trust me,” said Emil.

Dinner over, they went into the sitting room. His mother took a tin box from the cupboard and counted out some money. Then she shook her head and counted it again. Then she asked, “Who was here yesterday afternoon anyway, hm?”

“Fräulein Thomas,” answered Emil, “and Frau Homburg.”

“Yes, but still it doesn’t come out right.” She thought a minute, looked over the piece of paper where she had jotted down her receipts, did some arithmetic, and finally announced, “It’s eight marks short.”

“The gas man was here this morning.”

“Sure enough. Now it comes out right, worse luck.” She gave a little whistle, probably of vexation over her worries, and took three bank notes out of the tin box. “There, Emil! There are a hundred and forty marks. A hundred and twenty for you to give to Grandmother, and twenty for you. Tell Grandmother not to blame me for not sending it before, but I would have run too short. That’s why you are bringing more than usual this time. And give her a kiss. Understand? The twenty marks over is for you. You can buy your return ticket out of that when you’re coming home. That will leave you about ten marks. I’m not just sure. Out of the rest you can pay for what you eat or drink when you go out. Besides, it’s always a good thing to have a few extra marks in your pocket that you don’t need at the moment. Then you’re all right, whatever happens. There! And here is the envelope from Aunt Martha’s letter. I’ll put the notes in here. And be careful not to lose it. What will you do with it?”

She placed the three notes in the neatly opened envelope, folded it in the middle, and gave it to Emil.

Emil thought hard for a minute. Then he put it in his right inside pocket way down, patted himself on the outside of his blue coat to make sure and announced with conviction, “There, that won’t climb out.”

“And don’t tell anybody on the train that you have so much money with you.”

“But, Mummy!” Emil was hurt. To accuse him of such stupidity!

Frau Tischbein put some more money into her pocketbook. Then she took the tin box back to the cupboard and hastily read over the letter from her sister in Berlin giving the exact time of the departure and arrival of Emil’s train....

Probably many of you will think that no one need make such a fuss over a hundred and forty marks as Frau Tischbein was making for Emil’s benefit. And if a person earned two thousand or twenty thousand or maybe a hundred thousand marks a month, of course he wouldn’t have to.

But in case you don’t know it—most people earn far less than that. And whether you like it or not, anyone who earns thirty-five marks a week must think that a hundred and forty marks he has saved is a great deal of money. For lots of people a hundred marks is almost as much as a million. You might say that they write “100” with six ciphers and how much a million really is they cannot imagine even in their dreams.

Emil had no father. So his mother had to dress hair in her sitting room, wash blonde heads and brown heads, and work endlessly to have enough to eat and to pay for gas and coal and the rent and clothes and books and school. Only once in a while she was ill and stayed in bed. Then the doctor would come and prescribe medicine. And then Emil would make hot compresses for his mother and cook for them both. And when she was asleep Emil would mop up the floor with wet flannel rags so that she wouldn’t say, “I must get up. The house is going to rack and ruin.”

I hope you’ll understand and not laugh when I tell you that Emil was a model boy. You see he loved his mother. And he would have been ashamed to death if he had been lazy while she worked and reckoned and worked again. So how could he loaf on his school work or crib from Richard Naumann? How could he skip school even if he had a chance? He saw her tire herself out so that he would not have to do without anything the other school children had. How could he cheat her and give her trouble?

Emil was a model boy. There it is. But he wasn’t one of the sort that can’t be anything else because they’re cowards and stingy and not real boys. He was a model boy because he wanted to be. He had made a resolution, the way people make resolutions not to go to the movies any more, or not to eat any more candy. He had made the resolution, and sometimes it was very hard for him to keep it.

But when he went home at Easter and could say, “Mother, here are my marks, and I am the highest again,” then he was very happy. He liked the praise he got in school and everywhere, not for himself, but because it made his mother happy. He was proud that in his own way he could pay back a little of what she had been doing for him his whole life long....

“Gracious!” said his mother, “we must get to the station. It’s quarter-past one. And the train leaves a little before two.”

“All right, let’s go, Frau Tischbein,” said Emil to his mother, “but I want you to notice that I’m carrying my suitcase myself.”