After Midnight

by Irmgard Keun

  “Who’s that?” Case pushed under the bed, quick. How my heart is beating! I’m coming to open the door, I’m coming. “Why, Gerti!” My God, what’s happened? She looks dreadful. Hair tousled, her lovely dress crumpled like a dishcloth, her eyes red with weeping. She has been asleep in Liska’s bed. Oh yes, I remember, Dieter Aaron has gone for ever, let his mother send him away. Frau Aaron is still here, I saw her only a few minutes ago. She was sitting in a corner of the living room pulling firecrackers with that fool of a student. She kept giving a shrill little giggle before a cracker exploded.

  “Dear Gerti.” Oh, but I wish she’d go away. She sits down on my bed, weeping, talking. She would have gone anywhere with Dieter, she wouldn’t have been afraid of anything in the world if only he’d been true to her. “But he’s only a weakling, Sanna, just a wretched weakling.” She hates him. She’s going to write the Gestapo a letter saying she committed a racial offence with him, and then she will go to prison with him. Or else she’ll marry Kurt Pielmann and be a Nazi and an anti-Semite. She’ll pay Frau Aaron out, she will kick her and slap her, she’ll plan an attempt on the lives of the Nazi leaders. Oh, dear God, I haven’t got time to soothe and comfort her just now. Liska in tears, Gerti in tears, Betty Raff in tears—all in tears because they haven’t got the man they want. I’m the only lucky one, I’ve got Franz, I am to be envied, I should be thankful, I … what was that? A cracker? No cracker goes off with quite such a loud bang.

  There is screaming, the sound of running footsteps. “Gerti—Gerti, what’s happened?”

  Heini is lying on the floor of the living room, with Liska sprawled over him, cradling his head. Why is she doing that? Everyone’s looking at her. They are all there, Algin, Betty, the Aarons, everyone. I feel dizzy with shock and shame. Something shocking has happened, but it is something shameful too. All of a sudden everything is frightful: naked and indecent. I wish Liska would get up. A candle has fallen off the table and is burning away on the carpet, it ought to be put out, it ought—but I can’t move. Is that someone crying? Breslauer is kneeling beside Heini on some limp roses, the tears are flowing from his eyes, while I feel like laughing aloud with hatred. I’ve gone crazy, that’s what it is. I shall dance and laugh and sing my way to the lunatic asylum. Where is the Frankfurt lunatic asylum? You never seem to know these vital things. I shall dance out of the window, I shall dance down the streets, I shall—oh, do help me, God, do help me, Franz.

  Streamers rustle beside Heini’s head, blood is flowing over Liska’s hand. Everyone and everything are frozen into a dreadful, bright picture. We are not living creatures, we are painted. Betty Raff’s thin moaning is painted too. She is hanging round Algin’s neck. Algin doesn’t notice her. He is looking with heavy, thoughtful eyes at his wife, lying sprawled on another man’s body. Crazy Liska. She has left a living man to embrace a dead one. Because Heini is dead, I know it. He didn’t want Liska when he was alive—she oughtn’t to be hugging him like that now he’s dead and can’t defend himself. Frau Winter the cleaning lady has turned to stone too, with her quiet, hurried account of what happened. “Sick unto death of it,” Heini had said, and added, “My apologies if I’m disturbing the party a little, ladies and gentlemen, but I’m in the mood to do it now, I don’t think I can wait a moment longer. So goodbye, then, and good night.” And then he shot himself through the temple with a revolver and collapsed, very slowly and quietly. Everyone thought it was a silly joke at first.

  Heini is dead. Franz is down in the coal cellar, starving. I locked him in and I can’t let him out again, can’t move, I’m not real, I am painted in a picture. Dear God, let a burning bomb fall from heaven and destroy everything, release us all.

  “Oh Rosemarie, I love you. I’m always dreaming of you …” The gramophone is still playing out in the hall, I’ll begin to sing in a moment, I’ll begin … am I singing already? No, it was the doorbell. I heard it, everyone heard it. And the church clock is striking—I’ll count the chimes and then I will open the door. Suppose it’s the police looking for Franz? They’ll never find him, I’ll lie to them, I’ll kill them.

  It struck twelve. “Stay there, Algin, I’ll open the door. Help Liska, she can’t get up on her own—for goodness’ sake, let go of Algin, Betty. You go and help Frau Aaron, she looks as if she’s fainted. And give Fraulein Baerwald some of those drops of yours to stimulate the heart, she’s all breathless.”

  The bell rings again. “All right, just coming.” The door is not locked, I only have to lift the latch. But I must be very clever and very calm. I don’t want to die. Franz must not die. I want to go away with Franz, a long way away.

  “Good evening, young lady, you’re having a high old time in here—that’s about the hundred and fiftieth time I’ve rung. I promised your brother to come and fetch him at twelve—is he ready to leave, eh?” I’ve no idea what … who … oh yes, I remember. Not the police, not the police. A cheerful old man with bristly white hair and a Cologne accent. “Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth …” That’s him, it’s Herr Jean Küppers who was sitting in Bogener’s wineshop with Algin a few hours ago. It’s his seventieth birthday and he wants to leave his family. “Happy birthday, Herr Küppers. Come in and sit down. I’ll go and …” What will I go and do? I must fetch my case, I must steal Liska’s diamonds, I must steal Algin’s suit and coat and passport. And there sits the little man with the bristly white hair, a small cardboard carton on his knees. “All the luggage I need, young lady. Got to throw my ballast overboard, as your brother said. I liked that. We’ll walk and drink and sleep and to hell with the whole world—I feel amazingly young.” I’ve got a hundred-mark note, I’ve had it three years, I’m not leaving it here, it’s my hundred-mark note.

  “Algin—Algin, Herr Küppers has just arrived. You fixed to meet him, remember, you were going off walking along the Mosel together …” I’ll fold the hundred-mark note up very small and put it … where? I’ll hide it in my old tube of toothpaste. It will get dirty and ugly, and it’s so nice and new. But I must do it, I must be clever, very clever—oh, I can’t manage any more. When is it that train leaves? I will open the tube down the back, put the banknote inside and then close the tube again and roll it up and put it in my spongebag. It strikes me as very comic for a magnificent hundred-mark note to be traveling in such reduced circumstances. But we will live, Franz! Suppose he’s dead? He is dead now, he died in the coal cellar. I forgot him, I thought of nothing but our flight. I must pack bread in my case, I must pack meat in my case, anything I can find to eat. Franz will eat, Franz will live.

  Everything’s roaring and rushing, past me and around me. “You can see he’s shattered by his friend’s death, Herr Küppers, he can’t go with you now,” says Betty Raff. “Lie down for a moment, Algin, take a valerian tablet, do—it will soothe your nerves.” And Betty Raff leads Algin into the study. He lets her lead him.

  “She’s nabbed him,” says Herr Küppers. “Pity, that. Or maybe not. What sort of man is it can’t keep an appointment, even one he’s made with himself? Well, best of luck, young lady, you look the faithful sort, hope you are. Mind you, the faithful sort are unhappy often enough, but the faithless sort are accursed, they’re never happy. Have you got a man, eh? Have you got a boyfriend? Have you got another human being in the world? Then you thank God and stick by him and be faithful to him. Faithfulness can make women unhappy, but unfaithfulness makes them desperate. There’s a dead man in the place, where is he? I’ll just say a prayer for his soul, and then I’ll be off on my way. A man renews himself every seven years, and I’m feeling good and young. Where’s the corpse, then?”

  Liska, I’m ashamed of myself for hating you when you were lying sprawled over Heini’s body. Liska is sitting in my room. My case is outside the hall door, I hope nobody will steal it. Liska’s face is beginning to wilt. “I’ve got to get away, Liska, don’t tell anyone—listen, I stole your diamond rings, I’ve left you my savings account book.”

  “But why ha
ve you got to get away, Sanna?”

  “I just have, Liska, I … I … oh, please don’t ask me, I’ll write to you tomorrow.”

  “Here,” says Liska, and she gives me her ruby earrings. “Sanna, do you think I can ever be happy in my life again? He’s dead. I don’t even know if it was him I loved so much. I just know I loved.”

  “You’ll love again, Liska.”

  “You really think so?”

  Yes, I really do. She has an untidy sort of soul, no man has ever been able to put it in order yet, I could wish I were a man.

  “Good luck, Sanna, keep in touch. I’m no good at being on my own. I let Algin down, I left him to Betty Raff. I expect I’ll have to go off and make toy animals now. Heini’s dead. I’d have plucked one of my eyes out with my own hands just to hear a single word of love from him. Now he’s dead, and I hate myself for being glad I didn’t pluck out an eye. Goodbye, Sanna, God be with you wherever you go—and go fast, before the police hear of this. Breslauer will have to get out too.”

  “Algin, do please take your jacket off, it’s so hot in here you’ll catch a cold.” Algin is in the study with Betty Raff. I must have his jacket, because his passport’s in the inside pocket, and I need that passport. “Poor you, you’ve been wonderful,” says Betty Raff, giving Algin tea to drink. He drinks in the words, he drinks up the tea. Liska will be leaving his apartment to keep herself by making toy animals. And Betty Raff will marry Algin. “The prevailing chill,” as Heini once called her. Liska will be needing her rings for herself.

  We travel through the night, and all the hovering lights go with us. My head is in Franz’s lap. I must seem to be weaker than I am, so that he can feel strong, and love me.

  I’m tired, Franz. His hand is resting on my face. That makes me happy. I locked him in the coal cellar, and when I fetched him out, he wasn’t dead. Perhaps he had been angry, felt hatred, perhaps he had been full of dull, sad indifference. He didn’t die, and that’s love enough for me.

  Is the border a line, or what? I don’t really understand. A train stops traveling, and that’s the border.

  Men come along, opening cases, searching, rummaging—the border means fear.

  The train goes on again, my hundred-mark note goes on, so does Franz, so does everything except the fear. We have left the fear behind. That was the border.

  So I lie in the dark blue racing bed of the night. It will be all right, Franz, I am happy, we’re safe, we will live.

  “The roofs that you see are not built for you. The bread that you smell is not baked for you. And the language that you hear is not spoken for you.”

  Franz’s arms hold me tight, his breath is a torrent of love. The train is not running on rails, it’s floating over a sea of happiness.

  This seat is terribly hard and uncomfortable, but you are with me. We’ll sleep now. We shall need strength when we wake up. There are still stars shining behind the misty clouds. Please God, let there be a little sunlight tomorrow.

  AFTERWORD

  BY GEOFF WILKES

  THE WRITER WHO SUED THE

  GESTAPO: IRMGARD KEUN

  In October 1931, the Universitas publishing house in Berlin issued Gilgi, One of Us, the first novel by an unknown young author called Irmgard Keun. Born in 1905 in Berlin, Keun grew up in Cologne, where she attended drama school in 1925–27, after which she held one-year contracts at the well-known Thalia Theater in Hamburg and the City Theater in Greifswald, returning to Cologne in 1929. It is possible that Keun was prompted to begin her writing career by a meeting with Alfred Döblin, author of the monumental Berlin Alexanderplatz, and it is certain that she had not published anything anywhere before Gilgi, One of Us was accepted by Universitas.

  Keun’s debut novel, which describes the tensions between the career ambitions and the love life of a fearsomely competent young white-collar worker called Gisela (or Gilgi for short), was an immediate bestseller. The novel was greeted by celebrated satirist and literary critic Kurt Tucholsky as “very very promising,” and serialized in the German Social Democratic Party’s newspaper, Forward, where readers conducted a lively correspondence about the realism of Keun’s portrayal of the white-collar milieu, and the political implications of Gilgi’s attitude to work and love. Gilgi’s story was also filmed in 1932 with a cast including Brigitte Helm (the female lead in Fritz Lang’s legendary Metropolis), but no copy of the film has survived.

  In May 1932 Keun published The Artificial Silk Girl, which became an even bigger bestseller than Gilgi, One of Us. The Artificial Silk Girl again describes the fortunes of a young female white-collar worker, this time called Doris, but Doris is not very good at her job, and hopes that her looks will secure her future by bringing her a rich husband, or a rich lover, or a career in showbusiness. The novel is narrated by Doris herself, who displays a mixture of shrewdness and naïveté in conducting and describing her numerous affaires, but even her naïve comments are extremely revealing about the hypocritical elements of conventional sexual morality. Keun’s Artificial Silk Girl was probably influenced by Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which had been serialized in the fashionable Berlin magazine The Lady in 1925.

  In October 1932 Keun married Johannes Tralow, a fifty-year-old author and theater director. About six months later she met Arnold Strauss, a thirty-year-old doctor, and the couple began a relationship, meeting secretly several times before Strauss left Germany to escape anti-Semitic persecution, eventually settling in Norfolk, Virginia. Alongside a handful of official papers remaining in German archives, Keun’s letters to Strauss are the most important source of information about her life during the Nazi years, and the story of the letters’ survival is a remarkable one. Keun lost contact with Strauss in 1940 (for reasons which I explain below), and he married an American in 1941, but Strauss kept a large number of Keun’s letters, and his wife released a selection of them for publication in 1988, twenty-three years after his death. The letters were later donated to the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne.

  Keun’s work attracted conservative and nationalistic censure even before the Nazis came to power, for example Kurt Herwath Ball’s 1932 review of The Artificial Silk Girl, which castigated Doris’s unconventional morality, and concluded by adjuring Keun to “write in a German spirit, speak in a German spirit, think in a German spirit, and refrain from her sometimes almost vulgar aspersions against German womanhood.” But complaints such as this received official sanction after the Nazi takeover, and Gilgi, One of Us and The Artificial Silk Girl were both withdrawn from circulation. Keun nevertheless remained in Nazi Germany for more than three years, and applied for membership in the Reich Literary Chamber, without which writers could not publish (with the minor exception of individual publications approved on a case-by-case basis). Although Keun was never admitted to the Reich Literary Chamber, she did place various short pieces in newspapers and magazines—complaining in a letter to Strauss on June, 13, 1934 that editors were now too timid to accept anything more controversial than “what a ninety-year-old canoness would find funny”—but these pieces had not been approved by the Chamber, which fined Keun 200 Reichsmarks in November 1935 in consequence.

  Keun’s motives for remaining in Nazi Germany as long as she did are not entirely clear. Her application for membership in the Reich Literary Chamber suggests that she believed she could operate within the Nazi cultural system, and her reaction to the banning of her two novels suggests that she believed she could subvert the system. Keun wrote to the Berlin State Court in October 1935 seeking damages for loss of earnings from the Gestapo, which she said had confiscated unsold copies of the novels from Universitas’s premises in July 1933. I interpret this as an ironic gesture, appealing to the Nazi state’s pretensions of legitimacy in pursuing legal redress for its manifest injustice, and the gesture of course failed when the Gestapo argued that no compensation was due for the loss of prohibited books. Incidentally, while the Gestapo’s files showed that Keun’s novels had been withdrawn from bo
okstores and libraries, they did not record any raid on her publisher. Whatever Keun’s motives for staying in Nazi Germany, her years there clearly cost her psychologically, because her letters to Strauss (on November 3, 1933 and February 3, 1936) report episodes of self-harm by cutting. And those years also cost Keun creatively, because her correspondence with both Strauss and the Reich Literary Chamber refers to a novel manuscript entitled The Hungry Provider, of which no other trace has survived. However, those years also benefitted Keun creatively in the limited but nevertheless significant sense that when she eventually wrote about Nazi Germany—most obviously in After Midnight—she did so from considerable direct experience, as those authors who had emigrated in the early months of the regime could not.

  Keun left Germany in May 1936. She sent her husband Tralow (who had remained) a letter complaining about the Reich Literary Chamber’s treatment of her, whereupon Tralow wrote to the President of the Chamber quoting Keun’s letter and reporting that he had commenced divorce proceedings against her. The divorce was finalized in June 1937. Keun’s exile took her—sometimes more than once—to the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Poland, and the USA, and made her part of a constantly changing but culturally influential community of anti-Nazi authors, such as Heinrich Mann, Stefan Zweig, Egon Erwin Kisch, Ernst Toller, Hermann Kesten, and Joseph Roth (with whom she travelled for about eighteen months). Viewed from the outside and decades afterwards, such an existence might seem attractively cosmopolitan and bohemian, but Keun’s letters to Strauss and her brief memoir, “Pictures From Emigration” (1947), reveal an unenviable reality. Keun’s travels from one country to another were frequently prompted by financial reasons or immigration restrictions, for example when she visited the United States in 1938 partly to publicize the US editions of some of her books, and left partly because she had only secured a tourist visa. And the literary exiles were inhibited creatively no less than financially by the limited market which remained once their works were excluded from Germany, as is underlined by Keun’s repeated pleas to Strauss for financial assistance. Keun also noted in “Pictures From Emigration” that the exiles found it increasingly difficult to write convincingly about and against Nazi Germany the longer they had been away from the country, or to find anything else to write about, concluding a detailed discussion of this issue by confessing that at one point she herself “feared I would never, in my life, be able to write a book again.”