by Irmgard Keun
“One should never hit a woman,” I said, because that’s what you say to a woman. I did feel pretty indignant. “What a bastard, I’d never hit a woman.”
“Of course not,” said Johanna, forgetting to cry, “of course you wouldn’t, Ferdinand, you’re much too abject and unemotional.” The corners of her mouth dropped with a leaden display of contempt. “Anyway, what gives you the right to call Anton a bastard?” Johanna’s eyes bulged with fury. I had barely begun to take in this phenomenon before Johanna had, with style and power, slapped my face. I must say, she did make a wonderful-looking slapper, half radiant Amazonesque triumph, half sweetly surprised-at-herself femininity. “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that, Ferdinand, did I hurt you?” No, the slap didn’t hurt me. I just felt obliged to book it as a probable slight, and I wasn’t very happy about that. I don’t usually feel so easily slighted. It did incline me to reconsider Anton’s slap, though, and view it mildly, perhaps even positively.
“Slaps are impulsive acts, and impulsive acts can’t be mean,” Johanna lectured me, “I would never hold a slap against a man, especially one prompted by jealousy. It’s awful if a man is furious about nothing, but indifference is always worse.”
I was surprised that Johanna hadn’t gone to Anton already and brought him back. Resigned waiting isn’t really her style. Johanna claimed to be scared of Anton’s aunt, having met her once. From her account, the lady had to be a tigress. I wasn’t at all eager to beard such a creature. Besides, I was distracted by my concerns over Lenchen.
Lovers are egocentric. It speaks volumes for Johanna that she is sometimes—love and all—capable of registering the griefs of others, and even mustering a little interest in them. “What is it, Ferdinand?” she asked. “I can tell something’s up.”
I told Johanna about Lenchen. Lenchen is someone who came to see me in my office. She has dark shiny hair, a little white face, and a sad mouth. She seemed frozen. She wasn’t one of the usual seekers after help, she really needed help. She found it difficult to speak. It took me time and trouble till she thawed out a little.
Lenchen had just come out of prison, where she had done time for attempted murder or malicious wounding. Her account was not entirely clear, she contradicted herself frequently. After she had begun speaking, I avoided asking her any questions because I was afraid she might fall silent. There are times when the more questions you ask, the fewer answers you get.
Lenchen had had a well-paid secretarial job after the war. Her parents were dead, and her brother gone, along with his estate in East Prussia. Lenchen had a little fourth-floor flat in the city, a bedsitting room and a kitchen. She had met a man who was nice to her, and they had a friendly and peaceful life. One day, a distant cousin by the name of Helga turned up on her doorstep and asked to be taken in for a bit. She came from Berlin and had taken a job in a ladies’ outfitters in Cologne. She promised to get a residence permit and a room of her own in a matter of days. The first week, all was affection and harmony. The two girls exchanged confidences over long evening hours. The little room was almost bursting with so many feminine confessions. Lenchen was even pleased when Helga asked if she could stay another week. The third week, she started being less pleased. Her nice boyfriend felt Helga cramping his style, and Lenchen too would have liked some time alone with him. But then she thought that in times like these, lack of charity was twice as bad. Further weeks passed without Helga moving out. Lenchen started delicately hating the other woman. The feeling was new to her and alarming; she had never really hated anyone before. Helga took over the flat. She helped herself to Lenchen’s modest stock of makeup, her linens, her coffee, her money. She brought back visitors. She drove away the nice man by relaying, perfectly innocently, some of Lenchen’s confessions. She gave out Lenchen’s address as her own. She went on saying every day that she would leave, but she never left. She was always suffocatingly sweet and tender. Lenchen waited for Helga to go, stayed calm, and her detestation grew. She hated everything about her: the yellow curls, the watery blue eyes, the voice, the hands. She hated her own comb when the other had used it, the fork she ate with, the glass she drank from. At night she would lie awake, choking with hatred, as she listened to the other’s breathing.
She tried to do something about her feeling. She thought she was being low and mean and sometimes still more detestable than Helga. She thought she was a petty-minded little vixen, just because she resented someone else using her hairbrush, her cigarettes, her potatoes, her soap. Then again, she would wax indignant that the blond Helga was sponging off her, even though Helga had more money and nicer clothes. Her indignation was followed by the fear that she had an envious nature. She felt ashamed of herself, she thought she was being unfair to her cousin, and she did violence to her feelings by being nice to her. Her hatred grew. Lenchen became increasingly bewildered. She missed the nice man and learned that Helga was to blame. “You should be pleased,” she said, “didn’t you tell me yourself you didn’t really hit it off. Anyway, you’re not alone, aren’t I here with you?” Lenchen dreamed of coming home from work and being informed by a neighbor that Helga had unexpectedly died. Gradually, she ceased to care whether Helga offered her objective reasons to dislike her or not. She could no longer stand the sight of her, she didn’t want to breathe the same air as her, she hated her blindly and unconditionally. One day she crushed eight sleeping pills into her mulled wine. Helga didn’t die, but she did spend the next three days in hospital, and Lenchen had to confront an ugly charge. She defended herself clumsily and made a bad impression in court, while the blonde was noble, sweet, and sympathetic. To this day, Lenchen doesn’t know why she did the thing with the tablets. Maybe she had hoped the bane of her life would sicken and disappear, maybe she even hoped she would die, maybe—oh Lord, what did she know. Her own life, anyway, was one huge mess. She had gone to jail and lost her job, and now she was locked out of her own flat. Her enemy was there now with a fun-loving friend from work.
At the time Lenchen came to see me, she was down to her last five marks. She had seen the word “advice” on a sign. At first, she had just wanted to ask if I could find another job for her, then, haltingly and confusedly, she had told me the story of her lapse. I was able to find a place for her for a week with Fräulein Kuckuck, our graphologist. The first three days are gone, and now Lenchen is afraid she’ll be as much of a nuisance for Fräulein Kuckuck as Helga was for her. Maybe I’m prejudiced, but it seems to me the butter-blonde was all sweet deceit and unappealing. She disgusted me.
Johanna is a good girl. When I told her about Lenchen, she even briefly forgot about Anton. “What a silly thing,” she said, “if she hadn’t been such a scaredy-cat with that blond bitch, and so timid and anxious, but had made a proper stink and thrown her out on her ear—well, then she wouldn’t have accumulated so much hatred in her, and she’d never have tried to kill her. Do you understand now, Ferdinand, how humane and beneficial a well-timed slap can be?” I must say, I didn’t quite, because one can not do the one without doing the other, but for all I knew, Johanna might have a point.
Johanna proposed an approach to Magnesius. He was to employ Lenchen as a typist, find her a room, and then later, with a lawyer, get the blonde out of her apartment.
Magnesius is a hard-boiled character, but Johanna was still able to get the better of him on occasion. Only this time, I didn’t really fancy her chances. Faced with a real murderess Magnesius would get collywobbles. “But he’s half a murderer himself,” said Johanna, “if not more. How often do you think he wished a business rival might catch the bubonic plague, and how many times he hoped to see someone dead whom he hadn’t been able to swindle?” I didn’t doubt it. But between the wish and its fulfillment lies a long and decisive way. “The only thing the world cares about is if the deed succeeds or not,” said Johanna. Her empathy with Lenchen the moral train wreck started to frighten me. The least objection on my part caused her to argue like a mass murder
er on the loose.
“Basically, you’re a mass murderer yourself,” Johanna claimed, pouring the last of the brandy into our glasses. “Imagine you had a button, Ferdinand. Don’t look so stupid, I mean, a simple little button, like a bell push that you carried around in your pocket. Whenever you want someone to die, you just reach into your pocket and press the button, and whoever it is drops dead—no pain, no suffering, just one last breath, and out out brief whatsit.”
I told Johanna I would never press such a button. “Of course you would, Ferdinand, and how. Maybe you’d feel some compunction the first few times, but you’d get over it. Remember that hypocritical minister who was on the radio for hours the other day—“I could kill him,” you said. I bet you’d have pressed the button even while he was speaking. You’d have done it with pleasure. And right now, because you’ve a soft spot for Lenchen, you’ve conceived a hatred for that disgusting blond moth-head. Imagine, just pushing a button, and your friend’s worries are over. You’d press the button twenty times just reading the newspaper. You’d wipe out oily editors, twisted judges, deceitful, slanderous women, animal tormentors, politicians of every stripe, nuclear physicists, weapon salesmen, slave drivers, and warmongers.” I refused to accept the imputation of so much active philanthropy. Johanna wouldn’t yield. “You would wipe them out with your button. The only reason you’re not doing it now is because it’s against the law, because you’d be punished, because it’s difficult, and because actually doing it would be unpleasant. I completely believe that you wouldn’t want to be responsible for the death of someone who was a mortal enemy or bop them on the head with an ax. Thank God, even today you’re not the only person to draw the line at that. But with my button you’d have a way of killing people casually and impersonally—it wouldn’t even be murder, you’d just be removing them from the planet.”
Johanna went on and on elaborating her conjecture with the button. In her imagination, I’d already depopulated half the planet, including the Hunsrück farmer who gave me five pounds of maggoty flour in exchange for my last pair of shoes. “Now, Ferdinand, just picture a couple of starving fools, you can smell the lost war on them three blocks away, they get stomach cramps at the sight of a delicatessen window, and then one of those slimy politicians drives past in his socking great Maybach, just composing his latest pimping address to the electorate—are you telling me you wouldn’t push the button? You’d be ashamed not to.” I admit to not being entirely positive what I’d do under those circumstances, but Johanna still won’t give up. “Name me one person, Ferdinand, who would never push the button if he had one.”
“I expect there’d be some, Johanna.”
Johanna laughs. “Oh, really? Well, tell me the name—just one person known to us both. Are you claiming your fiancée Luise and your old in-laws wouldn’t have pushed it ten times in a week? Or Magnesius. Your friend, that sweet-natured Heinrich? At the very least he’d have put his enemy to sleep, that scandal-sheet editor who’s forever having a go at him. He’d have begun with him. Your cheerful landlady Frau Stabhorn would have cut a swath through the ranks of police and customs inspectors. Do you suppose there’d be a pretty woman left under forty if Meta Kolbe had the button? Give it to Liebezahl and check after an hour how many people are left in the tax office. Maybe a charlady, at best.”
I was getting bored with the button schtick. “I don’t want your button, Johanna—anyway, it doesn’t exist, and there’s no point in talking about such a thing.”
“It’s not pointless, Ferdinand, I want you to see that it’s just a matter of chance that you’re not a much more prolific murderer than Lenchen. You shouldn’t give yourself airs in relation to her. Admit it, that’s what you’re doing. You want to help her the way you help a fallen woman. That’s no good to her. She feels it, maybe subconsciously, but she feels it. All right, she’s having difficulty in her life. If that’s a flaw, it’s one you have too. You have no reason to be condescending just because you’re managing to eat by playing the village idiot adviser for Liebezahl.” Johanna beamed at me. Once she’d stopped banging at me with her wooden hammer, the world seemed light and pleasant again. “I’ve got an end of gin, Ferdinand, and I propose we drink that now, then we’ll head off—you to Anton, and me first to Magnesius, then to Lenchen. Maybe I’ll drop in on the blond bint and tear out some of her hair, if I can fit her in.”
Johanna’s movements were cheerful and brisk. She wore a fluffy purple dress and looked like a rampaging campanula. I didn’t have the strength to get in her way. She was looking forward to tonight, she said, she had never supposed she would be looking forward to silly Anton. She didn’t have the least doubt that I would be able to produce Anton right away. It never failed to impress me when someone had such confidence in me.
“I swear I’ll get him for you!” I exclaimed, fueled by the cooking brandy. “Do you love him so much, or why do you want him back so badly, Johanna?” I asked a little later, because in my mind’s eye I could see Anton with his shovel hands, his sticking-out ears, and his rather witless expression.
“I’m not afraid anymore when he’s around,” came Johanna’s reply, “not of life, nor of death.”
It was stupid of me to forget that everyone, even Johanna, is born with some kind of fear. No one can take away such a fear, no more than they could take away your heart without killing you. But if Anton is capable of taking away Johanna’s fear, that makes him an important figure in her life. So if it’s up to me, she can have him. “You know, the sort of fear you don’t know where it comes from, that’s real fear, and I don’t have that when Anton’s around,” she said, powdering her face. “I’m still afraid of bombs and diseases and the man from the electricity company who’ll cut me off because I haven’t paid the bill—but that’s a different fear, that’s a fear I can touch with my hands.”
“Let’s go, Johanna,” I said, “before we get even drunker, let’s not lose ourselves in metaphysics.” I felt a bit rotten. It’s so easy being a spoilsport, shutting off the living font of a woman’s ideas with a well-timed fancy word and an off-the-peg philosophical term.
“Call it metaphysics if you like, Ferdinand, if you can’t find any words of your own, you puny creature,” said Johanna. Bless her—at the very last moment, she always stops you feeling too guilty in front of her. “Will you get my Anton?”
“Yes, Johanna, I’ll get him for you.”
The evening was ripe and round as I traipsed through the park on the way to Anton. The air already had a distinctly autumnal smell. I was sad the lindens weren’t flowering anymore, I love their smell, and I didn’t get enough of it while it was going. And this summer I didn’t hear a nightingale either.
I loved the shimmering planes of lawn, the sound of my own footfall, and the colorless sky getting to be night. I thought about Johanna’s death button and the fact that I might be prepared to press it so as not to meet Anton’s deadly potato aunt.
I thought about Lenchen. She came to see me again today, the pale flower.
“I didn’t really know what I could ask you and how, Herr Timpe,” she said, “I thought your business might be shady, or for all I know obvious, do you understand? See, I’ve just come out of prison. It’s a wonderful thing to be free; I feel so happy. Of course, I’m unhappy as well. I went to the labor exchange. It felt funny, having to stand in line like a beggar in a soup kitchen—just for permission to work. They told me there that I would have to be patient. I found all that a bit humiliating. Don’t you agree? Please tell me if I’m boring you, Herr Timpe? I’m afraid I can’t even pay you anything. I thought you might be able to tell me how you get to be a prostitute. You know, I’m so happy to be free again, I’m so happy not to be in prison, and I want to enjoy the feeling. I don’t want to kill myself. As long as possible, I don’t. Do you understand? If someone had asked me a couple of years ago if I’d rather be in prison or dead, I’d have said I’d rather be dead. No question
. But now I’ve survived prison. I expect I’d survive being a prostitute too. But I’d have to try it out first, I can always kill myself later.”
Outside, there was a woman waiting, something about a daybed. Her mother-in-law had caused it to sag and ruined it in other ways too. Now the mother-in-law was refusing to pay her share of the reconditioning expenses. The woman wanted to discuss the case with me, and she was starting to get impatient.
I advised Lenchen not to go into prostitution, it really wasn’t a nice life. “Good God,” said Lenchen, “I’m not kidding myself, I was just keeping it in reserve for when things got really rough. I think I’m getting there, mind. Please don’t misunderstand me. I just wanted to tell you that getting started in prostitution is surprisingly hard. When I think of the old newspaper articles I used to read, it seemed almost more difficult not to. Every servant girl was in grave danger. Don’t you remember articles like ‘White Slaves Exported’? But if you want to set up in the trade here, domestically, whom do you ask? Do you suppose the welfare office has any information? Or the police? All the magazines have their mailbags that claim to answer all sorts of questions, but I don’t think they would answer mine. And you either can’t or won’t give me an answer yourself. Of course, I’ve heard of these places called brothels, but I don’t know where a single one of them is. Do you suppose a girl can just go there and introduce herself? I never thought I was particularly clever, but I didn’t think I was that ignorant either.”
