The Artificial Silk Girl

by Irmgard Keun

  Him: “I don’t have any more joy. Why am I alive, whom do I work for?”

  “I bet you never had to live through really tough times.”

  “Yes, I did,” he says. Well, I’m not going to ask what he considers tough times. There are those who already feel sorry for themselves when they haven’t had a hot meal by three in the afternoon.

  I make an attempt. “What are you writing all the time?” he asks.

  “I’m writing about my experiences.”

  “Really?” Not another word. He could ask a little more.

  He tells me how he met his wife and that she’s very ambitious and wanted to be in the world and her art, and how she became more and more restless every day and crazy and afraid to grow old and to have been nothing but the wife of a man in a small apartment. And no independence and no life’s work. And one night they both went to see a Spanish Argentinian dancer and for three days she was ill, that’s how jealous she was, and she had to stay in bed. And at first she didn’t want him at all, because she wasn’t well and she wanted to do things on her own and with her own strength. That’s quite a drama she must have put on for him. That kind of man will believe anything. It’s no fun lying to him — he’ll believe anything you tell him. I need more of a challenge. He’s too easy. After all, I’ve developed my lying into an art form. He doesn’t ask me any questions anymore. But he did notice that I thoroughly cleaned the house. Tomorrow I’m going to wash the curtains, because of all that smoke.

  “Herr Schlappweisser,” I say to the street vendor,” I want two smoked herrings, with roe.” I’m going to make that into caviar. Caviar is supposed to stimulate. His herrings are gigantic, and otherwise he’s a nice person too.

  “Young lady, this is the best of the best. Your husband will enjoy them.” His mother has open legs, he told me once.

  “How is your mother, Herr Schlappweisser?”

  “Thank you so much for asking, Madam.”

  “How’s business? Are you suffering much from the emergency legislation?”

  “Well, times are sh — ”

  “May I also have a flounder please,” I interrupt, to prevent him from saying a word I don’t want to hear.

  So I’m walking down Kaiserallee with my fur coat and my smoked fish, two of them with caviar in their bellies, when a guy accosts me. “You’re making an enormous mistake talking to me that way,” I say. Not another word. With a regal gesture, I cut off any further conversation. By the way, I will definitely have to take in his black shoes tomorrow.

  And so I make another attempt. I put my notebook on the coffee table and pretend to be asleep by eight. He looks at it — I can feel the blood pulsing in my knees — and then he pushes it aside without looking at it again. That’s incredibly civilized, I think, but maybe he’s just not interested in anything.

  “You’re so lovely, Miss Doris, how do I deserve this? Is there anything I can do for you? Do you have a wish I can fulfill?” But I’ve got everything.

  “You don’t look good,” I say to him, “Tonight you’re going to bed at ten.”

  “Oh, but I can’t sleep anyway,” he moans.

  So I get mad. “Stop imagining things. That’s a lie that you can’t sleep at night because of all your troubles. When I can hear you snoring next door every night.” I so want to give him my notebook — I want to be a real person — he should read my book — I work for him, I cook for him, I’m Doris — Doris isn’t just some piece of dirt. I don’t want to be innocent, I want to be the real Doris here and not that silly civilized product of the Green Moss’s imagination.

  I’ve gained five pounds. Slowly I’m regaining my allure.

  He’s stopped stroking my hair.

  I have a lot of work to do. I’m in charge of the entire household.

  And then we have to get some fresh air every day, so we go for a walk after dinner every night. It’s evening and none of the doors are open anymore. There are a few stars in the sky and my stomach feels calm. People are walking their dogs in elegant streets. It’s very nice. We make conversation. Some nights we don’t talk at all, and those are the best. That’s when I have a few moments without effort. He hates war. I tell him of the man who gave me the colorful beaded necklace, the one who had lost his eyesight and who had grown old in the war. And then he tells me about the little grenade splinter that’s wandering around in his shoulder. “Here — feel it,” and he puts his hand on his shirt while we are under a large tree without leaves. It was very interesting.

  “Does it hurt?” I ask.

  “No.”

  And there are lots of old men around selling matches and shoelaces — so many of them — and everywhere there are whores in the streets, and young men with starved voices. We always give everyone ten cents, that’s so little, and sometimes I lose interest in being happy. And then we go home. Sometimes you feel like you want to hug a lamppost.

  “Watch out,” he says, “there’s a step.”

  “Close your mouth, there’s a draft at this corner,” I say.

  And I make coffee in the morning. I get up too, now. But it was so nice of him to always put that crocheted cover over the coffeepot. I look at the clock — I used to have a watch, the one from Gustav Mooskopf, but it’s broken — I don’t really need one. But I want him to know about me. I’m going to give him my book tomorrow.

  In the morning, he polishes his shoes in the kitchen. He would always polish mine as well. Did he love his wife that much? I guess you always experience the man’s previous woman in a man.

  I washed his combs, mended three pairs of socks, and read in that funny book on his bedside table — I see your virgin urges manifest themselves, I see your joy and lost happiness — my spirit appears multiplied, indulges in all your sins and my soul returns all your virtues … nobody can understand that, but it rhymes.

  I can’t imagine ever calling him Ernst.

  I did it. I gave him my book. We’re sitting at the table, covered with a shiny, smoothed-out-with-thumbnails, yellow and white tablecloth with a pattern on it — “Do you like patterns? Please don’t have any cognac.”

  I would love to powder my face, that would give me more courage. I guess it’s okay to put on lipstick. The color is going to stay on until tomorrow morning, until I wash it off. Sometimes I have this funny empty feeling in my arms. It’s embarrassing, that feeling. But it’s not all that important.

  “Do you want to listen to foreign radio?”

  “My wife — she never loved anyone before me,” he says.

  Please, keep your mouth shut. All of that belongs to your wife. You’re a beast, you, you’re like they all are — it’s so mean — you’re just like all those other guys at the bar, sitting there like a plucked chicken — for a moment, I felt friendship for his wife. I can’t explain — please, how can I tell him, how?

  “You can talk about your love and your feeling and your desires — but please, you must not talk about the love of another woman, you’re not allowed to do that.” That’s what I told him.

  So he laughs. “I’m just so glad whenever I can talk about her,” he says. Am I a Therese for him? I’m sick of his wife. Therese always wanted me to talk about my men. There’s a difference, isn’t there?

  So we sit. Sometimes we laugh, and there’s music on the radio, and yellow patterns. “Have you ever met a more boring guy in your life, Miss Doris?” I wonder why he calls me “Miss” sometimes, and sometimes he doesn’t.

  “I’ve experienced every possible kind of guy,” I answer.

  “Well, well!”

  “Would you like to read in my book?”

  “Yes.”

  And we sit on what has been my bed all this time. It’s like someone going through my guts. I feel sick. Like an overinflated balloon. I smoke a cigarette — I’m going to throw up — his hair, which isn’t really blond, because he’s a man, under the light — Tilli used to wash hers with chamomile tea — “Please don’t read the last pages!” He’s flipping back and for
th. I’m afraid to look at his face — if only I hadn’t — “Please don’t read past New Year’s — my voice is bulging out of my mouth — and I see your blissful days and your lost happiness — I wonder what he’s reading right now. I don’t really care — too bad I can’t see his face — well, I guess you’re going to have to leave my pure home — I’m going to take all the stamped silver spoons with me, I promise. I wanted to make fried kidneys tomorrow — at the thought of kidneys I lose it and shed a tear. Thank God I didn’t really do it with the Onyx, at least that’s one less. I also didn’t do it with the Red Moon — but I stole the shirts. It’s okay for him to know. Only those passages where I was really depressed, I wish I could cover those up. Those where I was a bitch, well all right. But those instances where I was different, that’s all so embarrassing, it’s digging into my stomach — my face is all puffed up like a red tomato — I don’t understand how people can write books that everyone in the world can read — please stop, please — “Have you gotten to New Year’s yet — please, are you at New Year’s — why don’t you say something — whether you — ”

  “Just a minute,” he says.

  I have this flea bite under my left foot that’s itching like hell, and I so much want to take my shoe off — they always get you where a decent person is not supposed to scratch herself, those bastards. The sole of your left foot isn’t too bad, actually. “Have you gotten to New Year’s yet?” — ammonia would be perfect — “Do we have any ammonia around the house, for heaven’s sake?”

  “My dear little Doris, you’re not crying, are you?”

  Stop imagining my weaknesses, Sir, will you?

  “Well, I’m glad you came to me just in time,” he says.

  Boy oh boy, I just love that music they’re playing on the radio.

  “Shall we go for a walk, Miss Doris?”

  “Yes.”

  “Watch out, Doris, there’s a step here.”

  “Please keep your mouth shut at this drafty corner, Mister.” And at the big tree without leaves, a fox terrier is lifting up his leg. Oh!

  So we had a heart-to-heart talk. Are people who work more ethical than people who don’t work?

  “You know what we’re going to do, Miss Doris? We’re going to return your fur coat and make sure you get your papers, and then we’re going to get you work.” That’s what he says.

  Forget it! As if someone like me, who has no education and no foreign language skills except for olala and has no high school diploma and nothing could get anywhere through work. And no knowledge of foreign currencies and opera and all the rest of it. And no degrees. And no chance to get more than 120 in an honest way — and to always be typing files and more files, so boring, without any motivation and no risk to win or lose. And just more of that nonsense with commas and foreign words and all that. And all that effort to learn — but it’s so much, too much, it overwhelms me and won’t fit into my head and everything is spinning around me. There’s nobody you can ask and teachers are expensive. You have 120 marks with deductions to turn in at home or live on. You’re hardly worth more, but are hardly satisfied in spite of it. And you want a few nice clothes, because at least then you’re no longer a complete nobody. And you also want a coffee once in a while with music and an elegant peach melba in very elegant goblets — and that’s not at all something you can muster alone, again you need the big industrialists for that, and you might as well just start turning tricks. Without an eight-hour day. And if you’re really lucky, you become like Therese. You sit there and you save, and you eat very little. And you have a love. You take your savings book and you buy dresses so you will be beautiful, after all he’s something better. And you won’t take any money from him for love, so he won’t get the wrong idea. And then you’re with him at night — and in love and all that — and at eight in the morning you’re back in the office. And you’re over 20 and your face is getting ruined from all that work and love, because people need to get sleep. But he loves you, which is why it doesn’t really matter to you. You end it a hundred times and then you wait terribly — please come back, it doesn’t matter, please come back, and you buy expensive facial creams. You have this fatigue. His wife is sleeping at home. Sometimes she worries, but she can sleep in and gets enough money, because of his bad conscience. That’s when they get very generous. Therese’s room is cold and ugly and his apartment is nice and warm. She’s crying a lot because of her nerves, and a man gets sick of that — “My dear child, we have to break up, I’m destroying your life, you have other opportunities, I’m being eaten up with suffering but I have to leave you. You’ll find another one you can marry, you’re still pretty.” And that still is killing you. Good-bye — blablabla — the dresses have gone out of fashion, you won’t buy new ones and you eat little and you save. And you keep this devout smile on your face in front of your boss, that jerk whom you should hate even if he’s good to you, because he could dismiss you.

  And you’re getting old early, at a time when a star in her ermine coat hasn’t aged at all yet — you have your Doris who experiences great things until she too has become a Therese. That’s the way it goes with Therese and with so many others, now I know. I won’t play along with that, you can fuck yourselves —. Compared to that, a whore’s life is more interesting. At least she’s got her own business.

  “Dear Mr. Ernst, I don’t want to work, I don’t want to — please, I want to wash your curtains and beat the carpets. I want to shine our shoes and the floors and I want to cook — I love to cook, because it’s exciting for me. It tastes good to me and I can see your leathery skin turning pink and I take great pride in my work. I’ll do anything, but I don’t want to work.”

  “But I’m working, too, Miss Doris.”

  “But you had a higher education, Mr. Ernst, and so did your parents. And you have books on your bedside table and an education and an understanding of the things that you’re dealing with, and you like what you do, and it doesn’t cost you anything or very little, and it gives you enjoyment. But Therese and I have to pay for our enjoyments and we have to pay for them with money. I too know those Lippi Wiesels who write their own books and do all this talking about themselves and have this admiration for themselves, even though they have no money. But tell me please, what should I admire in myself? I don’t want to work.”

  “But you enjoy working around the house.”

  “I do everything around here. It interests me, because it doesn’t cost anything. That’s different. Should I work as a cook or a servant — for the Onyx kids — Madam, dinner is served, Madam — no way, you could get fired, you have to brownnose her and that’s why you have to hate her — you have to hate anyone who can dismiss you, even if they’re good to you, because you work for them and not with them.”

  “But Miss Doris, you’re working for me too, when you cook for me and when you wash my curtains.”

  “I’m working for you because I enjoy it, not because I’m afraid I won’t be able to make a living. I’m not really working. I just do it like that” — leave me alone with your stupid lectures, I don’t want to work and I want to keep my fur coat.

  He brought me a silk scarf with an incredible pattern — “I thought you might like it, I think it would go well with your brown dress.” But he’s so good to me.

  But he’s so decent.

  “My dear little Doris, my dear little Doris, my dear little Doris — I bet that’s how they come up with a new song that becomes a hit.”

  “Is your grenade splinter still wandering, Herr — ”

  “Please call me Ernst.”

  “Er — I can’t. Perhaps if I had my mouth on that grenade splinter, I can’t possibly image that I could.”

  “You’re a decent person, Miss Doris.”

  That’s what he said. And I can believe what a man tells me for a change, okay?

  “You know, Mr. — Ernst — that linoleum in the parlor — I was waxing it today, it’s practical no doubt, because the dust, but it’s cold so
mehow — ”

  “Do you think we should put a carpet?”

  “You don’t think that would be too much of an expense? If not, I would not be in favor of it.”

  “Let’s look at carpets.”

  So we went to look at carpets together and I was allowed to meet him at the office and he took my arm in front of his colleagues, real official. It wasn’t dark yet, either. I love him — not like that — but like that.

  Well, maybe like that after all. With emphasis on love. Sometimes I get this funny feeling. My poor fur. Please stay out of my personal affairs, Mr. Green Moss. Fur, you stay. I wonder if he doesn’t find me attractive. As far as I am concerned I don’t want to want, but I want him to want it. I’m feeling so stupid, like I want to look at myself in the mirror all the time. So she had long legs. But so do I. And what they had in common — but our walks with dogs at trees and stars and grenade splinters that wander, do they mean nothing at all? And the leftovers from that goose lasted forever. Having a goose in common, isn’t that worth something? And it lasted such a long time and didn’t smell at all. Always he’s talking about his wife. Will he never stop? What do you mean blonde — it’s just a color. And Schubert and Baudelaire and — Das ist die Liebe der Matrosen.

  His skin is getting more yellow every day, it’s as if spiders were running over it, it’s gross — we’re talking real yellow with gray in it. I can’t believe a compote made from fresh mirabelles wouldn’t help. Why do all the jokes I know have to be so obscene that even a decisively decent woman, especially one in such highly decent bright yellow circumstances, couldn’t possibly tell them?

  He kissed my hand. He, mine. And without hesitation. I had left flowers on the dining room table. And then he left some for me.

  Sometimes every night spent by yourself is a waste. But otherwise I’m fine.

  I’ll do anything, anything at all, but I won’t work.

  A letter. My God, a letter came. The mail comes at ten o’clock. I already know about the green ones that have advertising in them for shaving utensils and Rhine wine and free theater tickets that are a lie, since you have to pay for the show after all. Plus we have enough of our own theater around here. But there’s a white one and it’s closed in a mean way and that makes me suspicious. Who’s that bitch writing by hand?