The Artificial Silk Girl

by Irmgard Keun

  And then he says to me: “Whenever she’s crying, I have to think that she has long yellow teeth,” and then he asks me: “Does she have long yellow teeth?”

  I tell him, “No, she has little white teeth” — even though it’s not true. But it must be awful to be thinking of those long yellow teeth all the time.

  I collect images for him. I walk around the streets and the restaurants and among people and lanterns. And then I try to remember what I’ve seen and bring it to him.

  Just now a bureaucratic type is approaching me with a handkerchief with green trim and a monocle.

  So Brenner with his pale hands asks me: “What do you actually look like?”

  And I’m sitting right in front of him on the kitchen table and even though I wiped it off with that stinky rag first, I can be sure to have a grease spot on my butt when I get up. But it’s an old dress. I’ve put my feet on top of his knees, as he sits opposite me stroking my silky legs. He doesn’t have any other pleasure in life.

  The air is humming yellow. And so he asks me: “What do you look like?” That was really strange. I wanted to see myself from the outside, not like a man would usually describe me, which is always just half the truth anyway.

  And I’m thinking: Doris has turned into an enormous man with great erudition and is looking at Doris and says to her like a medical doctor: “My dear child, you have a nice figure, perhaps a bit thin, but that’s fashionable right now, and your eyes are a black-brown like those ancient silk pompons on my mother’s pompadour. And I have something of an anemic paleness and I have red cheeks at night and when I’m excited. And my hair is black like a buffalo, well not entirely. But well, kind of. And frizzy because of my perm, which is already starting to relax a bit. And I have thin pale lips by nature. With sensual make-up. But I have very long lashes. And very smooth skin without freckles or wrinkles or dust. And everything else is very nice, I think.”

  But I was ashamed to talk about my stomach, which is first-class and white, and I do think that all girls find themselves attractive when they stand in front of a mirror naked. And when you’re naked with a man, he’s so crazy already that he thinks everything is beautiful and that way you never really get a true opinion on your body.

  “I can’t hear you walking,” says Brenner. “How do you walk, do you move your hips?”

  And I tell him: “No, I can’t stand it when girls wiggle their behinds like a corkscrew when they walk. But sometimes, my feet are bouncing and I have a wonderfully exciting feeling in my knees.” And then I couldn’t go on talking, because I think “thighs” is such a terribly naughty word. But what else can you say when you talk about what’s above your knees?

  And over in the corner is a cockroach and everything is gray and without any elegance. It was disgusting. He didn’t have the courage to kiss me. That gave me courage and love. I used to think you could help people only with money. Actually, you can’t really help anyone, but you can give them pleasure — and that’s nobody’s business, not my dove-covered notebook’s or mine or anybody’s.

  Brenner strung up a necklace of wooden beads for me. They are a beautiful red and green and are put together with a system. And he’s blind! I’m not an idiot and I certainly have ambition, but I cried with joy because it’s very rare that you still get a present afterward.

  Tilli says: “Men are nothing but sensual and they only want one thing.” But I say: “Tilli, sometimes women too are sensual and want only that one thing.” And there’s no difference. Because sometimes I only want to wake up with someone in the morning, all messed up from kissing and half dead and without any energy to think, but wonderfully tired and rested at the same time. But you don’t have to give a hoot otherwise. And there’s nothing wrong with it, because both have the same feeling and want the same thing from the other.

  So I’m living in Berlin, first for myself and secondly for Brenner. And I’m sitting in the kitchen and the bed is behind a curtain. If it were up to me, I would hang the curtain — which is covered with stains — in front of the stove rather than the bed.

  And then there’s him with his thin lips and features like a child that has fallen and hurt himself and his hair is falling into his face, and he’s wearing a Tyrolean jacket. And I’m in front of him on the table and sometimes I love his hands around my feet.

  This has got to be the first time that a man’s hands have known exactly when I don’t like them to be moving. I’m telling you. There are only two types of men: those who have a thousand hands, and you don’t know how on earth you’re going to get them off you, and those with only two hands that you can deal with, simply by not wanting them to touch you.

  And he put his hands around my feet as if they were Christmas candles — at home, we keep our Christmas tree candles for three years, because we only light them while singing Silent Night, Holy Night.

  And there’s a silence and a steamy humidity and the gray wall in front of the window. All that is falling right on top of us. I’m sitting there powdering my face because of his hands. And I’m fixing my lipstick. But he can’t tell when I look beautiful. I offer him Berlin, which is resting in my lap.

  And he asks me: “Dear voice of a folk song, where did you go today?”

  “I was on Kurfürstendamm.”

  “What did you see?”

  And I must have seen lots of colors there: “I saw — men standing at corners selling perfume, without a coat and a pert face and a gray cap on — and posters with naked and rosy girls on them and nobody looking at them — a restaurant with more chrome than an operating room — they even have oysters there — and famous photographers with photos in showcases displaying enormous people without any beauty. And sometimes with.”

  A cockroach is crawling around — is it always the same one? — and there’s no air in the apartment — let’s smoke a cigarette —

  “What did you see?”

  “I saw — a man with a sign around his neck, “I will accept any work” with “any” underlined three times in red — and a spiteful mouth, the corners of which were drawn increasingly down — and when a woman gave him ten pfennigs, they were yellow and he rolled them on the pavement in which they were reflected because of the cinemas and nightclubs.”

  “What else do you see, what else?”

  “I see — swirling lights with lightbulbs right next to each other — women without veils with hair blown into their faces. That’s the new hairstyle — it’s called ‘windblown’ — and the corners of their mouths are like actresses before they take on a big role and black furs and fancy gowns underneath — and shiny eyes — and they are either a black drama or a blonde cinema. Cinemas are primarily blonde — I’m moving right along with them with my fur that is so gray and soft — and my feet are racing, my skin is turning pink, the air is chilly and the lights are hot — I’m looking, I’m looking — my eyes are expecting the impossible — I’m dying to eat something wonderful like a rumpsteak, brown and with white horseradish and pommes frites. Those are elongated homefries — and sometimes I love food so much that I just want to grab it with my hands and bite into it, and not have to eat with forks and knives — ”

  “What else do you see, what else do you see?”

  “I see myself — mirrored in windows and when I do, I like the way I look and then I look at men that look back at me — and black coats and dark blue and a lot of disdain in their faces — that’s so important — and I see — there’s the Memorial Church with turrets that look like oyster shells — I know how to eat oysters, very elegant — the sky is a pink gold when it’s foggy out — it’s pushing me toward it — but you can’t get near it because of the cars — and in the middle of all this, there’s a red carpet, because there was one of those dumb weddings this afternoon — the Gloria Palast is shimmering — it’s a castle, a castle — but really it’s a movie theater and a café and Berlin W — the church is surrounded by black iron chains — and across the street from it is the Romanisches Café with long-hair
ed men! And one night, I passed an evening there with the intellectual elite, which means ‘selection,’ as every educated individuality knows from doing crossword puzzles. And we all form a circle. But really the Romanisches Café is unacceptable. And they all say: ‘My God, that dive with those degenerate literary types. We should stop going there.’ And then they all go there after all. It was very educational for me, and like learning a foreign language.

  “And nobody has much money there, but they’re alive and part of the elite and instead of having money they play chess, which is a checkered board with black and blonde squares. They have kings too. And ladies. And it takes a long time, which is the whole point of it. Of course, the waiters don’t like it, because a cup of coffee only has a five-pfennig tip in it, which is very little for a chessy guest of seven hours. But it’s the cheapest occupation for the elite, because they’re not working and that’s why they’re keeping busy. And they are very literary, and the literary elite is incredibly busy with their coffee and chess and talking and all that intellect, so they won’t let on to themselves that they’re lazy. Some are from the theater too, and very colorful girls that are very self-assured, and a couple of older men with trembling bodies that have something to do with math. And most of them are desperate to get published. And they criticize everything.

  “That gave me a lot of material to work through. So I made myself a list of foreign words and wrote next to them what they meant. In some cases, I had to find out on my own. Those words make quite an impression when you use them. We artists were hanging out together — sometimes a few guys with beer bellies came walking by. They just look at us and they don’t belong. We look down on them. So I throw my head way back as they are talking and stare at the sky and don’t listen. And all of a sudden I press my lips together very tight and then I loosen them and blow smoke through my nose and full of nonchalance I throw a single foreign word at them. Foreign words used all by themselves are a symbol, I’ll have you know, and a symbol fits into any context. If you have enough self-confidence, nobody dares admit that they don’t understand. With a symbol you can never go wrong. But after a while I got tired of them anyway.”

  “What else, what else?”

  “And there’s a traffic light that changes from green to red and yellow — huge eyes and cars wait in front of it — I walk down the Tauentzien — and shops with pink corsets also sell green sweaters — why? And ties and a striped bathrobe for a man in the window — I see it — there are brown shoes and a fast food restaurant with Wagnerian music and sandwiches aligned in the shape of a star — and there are delicacies in the kitchen that I’m ashamed to never have heard of. And at Zuntz, you can smell the coffee. It’s small and brown and lies in large flat baskets that look like the South. It’s all so wonderful — and there are wide tracks of rails and yellow trains. And people at the KaDeWe. It’s so big and with clothes and gold and many elegant little dogs on leashes at the door, waiting for ladies shopping inside — and enormously square — and a little Wittenberg Temple that has a train running in its belly — with a large lit-up U in front of it.

  “And a blonde man with a monocle invites me — he has teeth like a mouse and a disgustingly small mouth that’s all shiny and makes the monocled man look naked. We’re drinking wine in a highly respectable restaurant. He’s in insurance and talking without end and loud without any inhibition and he’s an idiot and talking about his mother, to whom he gave a carpet as a gift — and someone sold him a cigarette lighter that didn’t work and then wouldn’t repair it for him for free — and 3 mark 80 is a lot of money — he doesn’t throw his money out the window, but he does have to have his three beers every night together with his friends. After that, he goes to see his mother — after the third beer, every night. There are some who don’t do that — he can’t stand to be ripped off, that really makes him mad, and then that thing with the cigarette lighter — and I should come visit him, and that he knows restaurants where you can get a lot to eat for very little money, and you get seconds on potatoes and vegetables — and his foot is coming dangerously close to me — he just can’t get over that cigarette lighter — and he won’t give anything to the broken man with the pink bandaids, because what would happen if you started to give to everybody. I was thinking that too. He has to get to know the poor person first, since he had a bad experience once when he gave his roll to a beggar, because he had a bad stomach from the roast the night before and had sued the cook, and there was a thick layer of butter on the roll — and when he comes downstairs, both sides of the roll are stuck to the door — since then, he’s changed, also when it comes to Jews — and he shows me the chintzy cigarette lighter — and Gandhi wasn’t his cup of tea either, and a real man doesn’t drink goat milk all the time, that’s decadent, but more than three beers is no good either, a glass of wine maybe but no schnapps, because that’s how a friend of his became a bailiff. He was studying to become a lawyer, and then the schnapps, and no degree — and the cigarette lighter — and that’s when I had enough of the clean-shaven insurance guy — ”

  And we were laughing, Brenner and I.

  “What did you see, what — ”

  I unpack my eyes for him — what else did I see?

  “I went further down Ansbacher Strasse — there’s a store that sells precious stones, one kind is called amethyst, which practically already sounds purple, doesn’t it?”

  “And what else, what else?” — you can hardly breathe in that kitchen, and God knows when his wife is coming back — “Is this what Berlin smells like?” he asks as I hold my powder puff up to his nose — “What else — what else?”

  “On Nürnberger Strasse there’s a restaurant with gathered curtains that only Russians go to — it has wallpaper that reminds you of frozen cherries with sunny flowers — very funny — and an old Russian Moscow as a picture and a tiny madonna in the corner. And small lamps, a little bit white and a little bit red, if you’re tall you’ll hit your head on the ceiling. I’m all by myself, learning the menu by heart because of the Russian words that go with the sound of the music. I drink something yellow called Narsan — they also have Schachly from the Caucasus and Watrushki or something like that with cheese. The girls are wearing little white aprons and they’re pretty, like dolls with big eyes and Russian language — and with their elegant faces they can prove to anyone that they are the wives of generals. The men have small black toothbrush-like mustaches — the band is singing — it’s a language that sounds like soft mayonnaise, so sweet. The ceiling is a marbled grayish green — I see, I see — those general waitresses are so pretty — the music has bald spots and violins — a woman wearing a yellow blouse is laughing in Russian — men are happy without women and drunk without wishes and are hugging each other because they’re full of booze and love for everything — at the back wall there’s a mirror, it makes you look pale, but pretty — they have deep, dark eyes that are brown like the violin — you can be so wrong about these things — a handsome man just kissed a woman fat as a tadpole — old men are kissing each other — the music goes one-two, one-two — there are lamps hanging from the ceiling that look like Paul’s starfish collection stuck together — the music is covered with flowers like a chiffon dress which tears very easily — let me tell you, Herr Brenner, a woman should never wear artificial silk when she’s with a man. It wrinkles too quickly, and what are you going to look like after seven real kisses? Only pure silk, I say — and music — ”

  “What else, what else — ”

  Pure silk — Hubert once gave me a passionate kiss on the eyes, or on the eyelids rather — and so I had a tiny red spot on each eye — and was terrified at home — I couldn’t move my eyelids during lunch on Sunday — and I stared in front of me until I had tears in my eyes. “Why are you making eyes like a crazy woman?” asked my father, but I keep staring — and that’s just the way I have to stare now, because I have to see so much.

  “Light gray suits really make dark men look like demons. Red ti
es make them look funny — my eyes are all worn out — you, you, you — ”

  “What else, what else?”

  “The women in Berlin are beautiful and well groomed and in debt.

  “I’m dancing, yes, I’m dancing — I’m choking — there’s a Russian inside of me — he’s an emigrant — the way he’s talking — his words stumble rough and softly like the wheel of a Mercedes rolling over cobblestone pavement — he has no hair, his eyes are young and hard. And he’s slender. And the woman with her white face and her strawberry mouth is pulling her badger over her left shoulder in a way — and with her left hand she says to my Russian: ‘You, monkey, are none of my business really, but I wanted to — I like the way you look!’ — and she says it with elegant disdain. I’m thinking, you bitch! — ‘Interesting woman,’ says the Russian. ‘But crooked legs,’ I say in a cold voice. ‘How do you know?’ ‘Because of the timid way she holds on to her glass and wants to go to the bathroom, but doesn’t dare to go.’ Believe me, whenever a woman wants to take a guy away from me, I have an elegant way of badmouthing her, I don’t really know how I do it, but somehow I become intelligent all of a sudden. And we kiss while we’re dancing — in a bar — the cocktails are colorful — the color of a bleached brimstone butterfly — you get a headache after — ”

  The wooden armoire is creaking, and Brenner puts his head on my legs: “I know you, I don’t have to see you.”

  I think about what he said even though I don’t really have time to think about words — I have a lot of love that I’m willing to share, but you have to give me enough time so I want to. Tilli is crying because her husband has been unfaithful — because it could have been just any woman for him. All I say to Tilli is: “You should know that it could have been any other woman instead of you too. It’s no different. And love is when you’re drunk together and you want to do it and everything else is nonsense.”