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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781782690573 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Steerforth Press |
| Publication date: | 09/15/2015 |
| Pages: | 160 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.80(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.60(d) |
| Age Range: | 9 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Translated from the German by Anthea Bell.
Walter Trier was an acclaimed cartoonist and illustrator, and Kästner's collaborator on more than a dozen children's books.
Read an Excerpt
Dot & Anton
By Erich Kästner, Walter Trier, Anthea Bell
Steerforth Press
Copyright © 1935 Atrium Verlag AG, ZürichAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78269-057-3
CHAPTER 1
Dot Puts on a Show
When Mr Pogge got home at lunchtime he stood rooted to the spot, staring in surprise at the scene in the living room. There stood his daughter Dot with her face to the wall, bobbing little curtseys all the time and whimpering. I wonder whether she has a stomach ache, he thought. But he held his breath and stayed put. Dot reached both arms out to the silver-patterned wallpaper, bobbed a curtsey and said in a trembling voice, 'Matches, please buy my matches, ladies and gentlemen!' Piefke, Dot's little brown dachshund, was sitting beside her, looking puzzled and thumping his tail on the floor in time with her sales talk. 'Take pity on us poor people!' Dot went on pathetically. 'Only ten pfennigs a box.' Piefke the dog began scratching behind his ear. He probably thought the matches were too expensive, or maybe he was sorry he didn't have any money on him.
Dot raised her arms even higher, curtseyed and said, in faltering tones, 'My mother is totally blind, and still so young. Three boxes for twenty-five pfennigs. God bless you, kind lady!' Apparently the wall had bought three boxes of matches from her.
Mr Pogge laughed out loud. He'd never seen anything like it before. There stood his daughter in the living room, where the furniture and fittings had cost all of 3,000 marks, begging from the wallpaper. When she heard someone laughing Dot jumped, turned round, saw her father and ran out of the room. Piefke scurried unsympathetically after her.
'Have you gone soft in the head?' asked her father, but there was no reply. He turned and went into the study. There were letters and newspapers all over his desk. He sat down in his deep leather chair, lit a cigar and began reading.
Dot's real name was Luise. But she hadn't wanted to do much growing in her first few years of life, so they called her little Dot, and the nickname Dot stuck, although she had been going to school for a long time and wasn't so tiny any more. Her father, Mr Pogge, was the director of a walking-stick factory. He made a lot of money and had a great deal to do. However, his wife, Dot's mother, didn't agree. She thought he didn't make nearly enough money and worked much too hard. When she told him so, he always said, 'Women don't understand these things.' But she didn't really believe that.
They lived in a large apartment not far from the bank of the river where the Reichstag parliament building stood in Berlin. The apartment had ten rooms, and it was so large that when Dot got back to her own room after lunch she was usually feeling hungry again, after going all that way.
And speaking of lunch: Mr Pogge was hungry himself. He rang the bell and Berta, the fat maid, came in. 'Am I going to starve?' he asked crossly.
'Oh no, sir!' said Berta. 'But madam is still out in town, and I thought ...'
'Any more thinking and you won't get your day off tomorrow,' he said. 'Off you go — lunch! And call the governess and the child.'
Fat Berta set off at a trot, hurrying through the door like a ball rolling along.
Mr Pogge was first in the dining room. He took a tablet, made a face and drank some water to wash the tablet down. He took tablets whenever he had the chance. Before meals, after meals, before going to bed, after getting up. Some of the tablets were circular, some of them were rectangular, some of them were like little globes. You might have thought he took tablets for fun, but it was because he had stomach trouble.
Then Miss Andacht turned up. Miss Andacht was the governess. She was very tall, very thin and very crazy. 'She must have been dropped on her head as a baby,' fat Berta always used to say. Apart from that the two of them got on well. Earlier, when the Pogges didn't have a governess for Dot yet, and the nanny Käte was still there, Dot always liked sitting in the kitchen with Berta and Käte. They used to pod peas together, and Berta took Dot shopping with her and told her about her brother in America. And Dot had always been well and cheerful and didn't look as pale as she did these days, now that crazy Miss Andacht had joined the household.
'My daughter looks pale,' said Mr Pogge, sounding worried. 'Don't you think so too?'
'No,' said Miss Andacht. Then Berta brought in the soup and laughed. Miss Andacht squinted at the maid.
'Why are you laughing in that silly way?' asked the master of the house, spooning up soup as if he were being paid for it. But suddenly he dropped his spoon in the middle of his soup, put his napkin to his mouth, swallowed the wrong way, had a coughing fit and pointed to the door.
Dot was standing in the doorway. But goodness gracious, what did she think she looked like?
She had put on her father's red morning jacket and stuffed a pillow under it, so that she resembled a dented round teapot. Her thin bare legs, showing under the jacket, looked like drumsticks. Berta's Sunday hat perched unsteadily on her head. It was made of brightly coloured straw. Dot was holding the rolling pin and an open umbrella in one hand, and a piece of string in the other. A frying pan was tied to the string, and in the frying pan, which clattered over the floor behind Dot, sat Piefke the dachshund, frowning. He wasn't frowning because he was cross but because he had too much skin on his head. And as the skin didn't know where to go, it fell into folds.
Dot walked once round the table, stopped in front of her father, looked at him hard and said, 'May I see your tickets, please?'
'No,' said her father. 'Don't you recognize me? I'm the Minister of Railways.'
'Oh, I see,' she said.
Miss Andacht stood up, took Dot by the collar and removed all the extra clothes and other things until she looked like a normal child again. Fat Berta took the fancy dress outfit and the rolling pin and the umbrella out of the room. She was still laughing in the kitchen. You could hear her distinctly.
'How was school?' asked Dot's father, and as she didn't answer but just stirred the soup in her soup plate around, he went on, 'What's three times eight?'
'Three times eight? Three times eight is a hundred and twenty divided by five,' she said. Nothing much could surprise Mr Pogge the walking-stick factory director now. He worked out the sum in his head, and since it was right he went on with his lunch. Piefke had climbed up on an empty chair, propped his forepaws on the table, and seemed to be frowning as he made sure that they all finished their soup. He looked as if he were about to make a speech. Berta brought in the next course, chicken with rice, and gave Piefke a little slap. The dachshund misunderstood it, and got right up on the table. Dot put him down on the floor again and said, 'I wish I had a twin.'
Her father shrugged his shoulders regretfully.
'It would be great,' said Dot. 'We'd both wear the same clothes, and we'd have hair the same colour and take the same size of shoes, and we'd be just like each other and have the very same face.'
'So?' said Miss Andacht.
Dot groaned with delight when she imagined being one of twins. 'No one would know which was me and which was her. And if they thought one of us was me it would be my twin. And if they thought it was her then it would be me. Oh, it would be brilliant.'
'It'd be unbearable,' said her father.
'And when the teacher said, "Luise!", I'd stand up and say, "No, I'm the other one." And then the teacher would say, "Sit down!" and call to the other one and shout, "Why don't you stand up, Luise?" and she would say, "But I'm Karoline." And after three days of that the teacher would get spasms and have to go away to a sanatorium on sick leave, and we'd have holidays.'
'Twins usually look very different from each other,' claimed Miss Andacht.
'Karoline and I don't,' Dot contradicted her. 'You've never seen two people look so alike. Not even the director could tell us apart.' By the director she meant her father.
'One of you is quite enough for me,' said the director, helping himself to more chicken.
'What do you have against Karoline?' asked Dot.
'Luise,' he said in a loud voice. When he said 'Luise' like that, it meant she must stop arguing or she'd be sorry. So Dot kept quiet, ate chicken and rice and secretly made faces at Piefke, who was sitting on the floor close to her, until he felt so uncomfortable that he shook himself and ran off to the kitchen.
When they were eating dessert (it was greengages), Mrs Pogge finally turned up. She was very pretty, but strictly between ourselves she was also unbearable. Berta the maid had once told a colleague of hers, 'Someone ought to slap my mistress with a wet cloth. She has such a nice, funny child and such a charming husband, but do you think she bothers about either of them? Not a bit of it. She spends all day driving round town, shopping, taking things back to the shops to be exchanged, going to tea parties and fashion shows. And in the evening her poor husband has to trail along after her. Watching six-day bicycle races, going to the theatre or the cinema, balls, there's always something going on. She hardly comes home at all any more. Well, that has its good side.'
So Mrs Pogge turned up, sat down and looked hurt. Really she should have been the one to apologize for being so late. Instead she sounded insulted because they had started lunch without her. Mr Pogge took some more tablets, rectangular tablets this time, made a face and washed them down with a drink of water.
'Don't forget we're going to Consul General Ohlerich's party this evening,' said his wife.
'No, I won't,' said Mr Pogge.
'This chicken is cold,' she said.
'Yes, it is,' said fat Berta.
'Does Dot have homework to do?' she asked.
'No, she doesn't,' said Miss Andacht.
'Child, you have a tooth loose!' she cried.
'Yes, I do,' said Dot.
Mr Pogge got up from the table. 'I hardly remember what an evening at home is like any more.'
'Why, we never set foot outside the door yesterday evening,' replied his wife.
'But the Brückmanns were here,' he said, 'and the Schramms and the Dietrichs, the place was full of guests.'
'Were we at home yesterday or were we not at home yesterday?' she asked challengingly, looking at him hard. Mr Pogge the director said nothing, to be on the safe side, and went into his study. Dot followed him and sat down in the big leather armchair with him; there was room for them both. 'Your tooth is loose, is it?' he asked. 'Does it hurt?'
'It's not too bad,' she said. 'I'll pull it out sometime. Maybe today.'
Then a car horn hooted outside the building. Dot went to the front door with her father. Mr Hollack, the chauffeur, saluted her and she saluted him back. She did it just the same as the chauffeur, putting one hand to the peak of her cap, even though she wasn't wearing a cap. Her father got in the car, it drove away and her father waved. Dot waved back.
When she wanted to go back inside the apartment building, Gottfried Klepperbein was standing outside the door. He was the son of the couple who were caretakers of the building, and he was a total lout.
'Hey,' he said, 'if you give me ten marks I won't tell on you.
If you don't I'll tell your father.'
'Tell him what?' asked Dot innocently.
Gottfried Klepperbein barred her way threateningly. 'You know perfectly well what, so don't act so stupid, sweetie.'
Dot wanted to get indoors again, but he wouldn't let her by. So she stood beside him, put her hands behind her back and looked up at the sky in surprise, as if the Zeppelin airship were flying overhead, or she'd seen a maybug with skates on, or something like that.
Of course the boy looked up at the sky too, and then Dot shot past him like lightning, leaving Gottfried Klepperbein with nothing for his trouble, as they say.
CHAPTER 2Anton Can Even Cook
After lunch Mrs Pogge had a migraine. Migraines are headaches when you don't actually have a headache. Fat Berta had to let down the bedroom blinds so that it was all dark, like real night. Mrs Pogge lay down in bed and told Miss Andacht, 'Go for a walk with the child, and take the dog with you. I need peace and quiet. And I don't want anything to happen!'
Miss Andacht went to Dot's room to collect Dot and the dog. She arrived in the middle of a theatrical performance. Piefke was lying in Dot's bed, with only his nose showing. He was playing the part of the wolf who has eaten Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother. He didn't know the story, but he acted his part quite well. Dot was standing beside the bed wearing her red beret and with Berta's shopping basket over her arm. 'Oh, Grandmother,' she was saying, 'what big teeth you have!'
Then she switched to a different, deeper voice and growled, 'All the better to eat you with.' She put the basket down, went up to the bed and whispered to Piefke, like a prompter, 'Right, now you have to eat me.'
Piefke, as I said before, didn't know the story of Little Red Riding Hood yet, so he turned over on his side and did nothing of the kind.
'Eat me!' Dot ordered him. 'Come on, eat me up this minute!' Then she stamped her foot and cried, 'Oh, for goodness' sake! Are you hard of hearing or what? You're supposed to be eating me!'
Piefke got cross, came out from under Dot's quilt, sat on the pillow and barked as loud as he could.
'He doesn't have a clue,' said Dot. 'He's a rotten actor.'
Miss Andacht put the clueless wolf's collar and lead on him, made sure that Dot was wearing her blue coat with the gilt buttons, and said, 'Get your linen hat. We're going for a walk.' Dot would really rather have kept her beret on, but Miss Andacht said, 'If you do that, then you can't go to see Anton.' The threat worked.
They left. Piefke sat down in the road so that Miss Andacht had to tug at his lead. 'He's going for a sleigh ride again,' said the governess, picking him up. He draped himself over her arm like a handbag that had been in an accident, darting her nasty looks.
'What street does Anton live in? Did you notice that?'
'Artilleriestrasse, fourth floor, on the right,' said Dot.
'What number is the building?'
'A hundred and eighty divided by five,' said Dot.
'Why don't you just say thirty-six and be done with it?'
'It's easier to remember my way,' claimed Dot. 'And incidentally, I think Berta smells a rat. She says someone must be positively devouring matches, she keeps buying more and they always go missing. I hope she won't find us out. And Klepperbein's been threatening me again. He says he wants ten marks or he'll give us away. Suppose he tells the director, then what?'
Miss Andacht didn't reply. For one thing she wasn't naturally talkative, and for another she didn't like this conversation. They walked along beside the River Spree, crossed a small iron bridge, went up the Schiffbauerdamm, turned left down Friedrichstrasse, right at the corner, and then they were in Artilleriestrasse.
'It's a very old, ugly building,' remarked the governess. 'Watch out; there could be trapdoors in it.'
Dot laughed, picked Piefke up and asked, 'Where shall we meet later?'
'You can pick me up from the Café Sommerlatte at six.'
'Are you going dancing with your fiancé again? Give him my regards, and have a nice time!' Then their ways parted. Miss Andacht went off to go dancing, and Dot went into the strange apartment building. Piefke howled. He didn't seem to like the place.
Anton lived on the fourth floor. 'It's great that you've come to see me,' he said. After they had said hello they stood in the doorway for quite some time. The boy was wearing a large blue apron.
'This is Piefke,' Dot explained.
'Pleased to meet you,' said Anton, patting the little dachshund. And once again they stood there saying nothing.
'Go on, then, invite me into the sitting room,' Dot said at last.
Then they laughed, and Anton went ahead. He took Dot into the kitchen. 'I'm just cooking,' he said.
'You can cook?' she asked. Her jaw dropped, and stayed like that.
'Well, yes,' he said. 'What else are we to do? My mother's been ill for such a long time, so I do the cooking when I get back from school. We can't go hungry, can we?'
'Please don't let me disturb you,' said Dot. She put Piefke down, removed her coat and took her hat off. 'Go on cooking, and I'll watch. What are you cooking today?'
'Boiled potatoes with salt,' he said, picking up an oven cloth and going over to the stove. There was a pan standing on it. Anton took the lid off the pan, stuck a fork into the potatoes and nodded, satisfied. 'But she's much better now,' he said.
'Who is?' asked Dot.
'My mother. She said she'll get up for a couple of hours tomorrow. And she may go back to work next week. She works as a cleaning lady, you see.'
'Yes, I see,' agreed Dot. 'My mother doesn't work at anything. At the moment she has a migraine.'
Anton took two eggs, broke them into a pan, tipped the last of the eggs out of their shells and then threw the shells away in the coal scuttle, poured some water into the pan, put something white into it on top of the eggs and the water, and then took a little whisk and stirred the mixture up with it. 'Oh no!' he cried. 'It's going lumpy.'
Piefke trotted over to the coal scuttle and visited the eggshells.
'Why did you put sugar in that pan?' asked Dot.
'It was flour,' Anton told her. 'I'm making scrambled eggs, and if you add flour and water to the eggs you get bigger helpings.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Dot & Anton by Erich Kästner, Walter Trier, Anthea Bell. Copyright © 1935 Atrium Verlag AG, Zürich. Excerpted by permission of Steerforth Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
This Introduction is as Short as Possible, 7,Chapter One Dot Puts on a Show, 11,
Chapter Two Anton Can Even Cook, 21,
Chapter Three Shaving a Dog, 31,
Chapter Four Some Differences of Opinion, 41,
Chapter Five Do-it-yourself Dentistry, 49,
Chapter Six The Children on the Night Shift, 55,
Chapter Seven Miss Andacht Gets Tipsy, 61,
Chapter Eight Light Dawns on Mr Bremser, 67,
Chapter Nine Mrs Gast Has a Disappointment, 75,
Chapter Ten Things Could Go Wrong, 83,
Chapter Eleven Mr Pogge Practises Spying, 91,
Chapter Twelve Klepperbein Earns Ten Marks and a Punch in the Face, 99,
Chapter Thirteen Fat Berta Swings the Clubs, 105,
Chapter Fourteen An Evening Dress Gets Grubby, 113,
Chapter Fifteen A Policeman Dances the Tango, 121,
Chapter Sixteen All's Well that Ends Well, 129,
A Little Postscript, 139,