by Irmgard Keun
Gilgi looks out the window. The hopeless people in the streetcar—no, she has nothing in common with them, she doesn’t belong with them, she doesn’t want to belong with them. They’re gray and tired and lifeless. And if they’re not lifeless, they’re waiting for a miracle. Gilgi isn’t lifeless, and she doesn’t believe in miracles. She only believes in what she creates and what she earns. She isn’t satisfied, but she’s pleased. She’s earning money.
You people in the streetcar, aren’t you happy?
We’re so tired.
But you’re earning money, aren’t you?
It’s so little.
You could turn that little into more.
That’s so hard.
That’s what makes it fun.
It’s not fun.
Times are tough. No-one likes being what they are. No-one likes doing what they do.
Aren’t any of you young like me, aren’t any of you happy like me? Yes! One—two—three faces. Young, firm features, hard little lines on the forehead, chin thrust out to take on the world, alert eyes.
Gilgi wraps her hand around the edges of her little case. She holds on tightly. The sharp little movement is like a handshake. Yes, after all! Not I—but we. We! She lifts her head, and her eyes sparkle. You—you—you and I: we’ll make it.
Tick-tick-tick—rrrrrrrr—with reference to your letter of the 18th of … tick-tick-tick—rrrrrrrr … enclosed please find … tick-tick-tick … following our telephone conversation yesterday we wish to inform you …
The steno-typist Gilgi is typing the ninth letter for the firm of Reuter & Weber, Hosiery and Lingerie (Wholesale). Her typing is quick, clean, and error-free. Her little brown hands, her well-kept fingers with their short nails, belong to the machine, and the machine belongs to them.
Tick-tick-tick—rrrrrrrr … the steno-typist Gilgi goes in to the boss and puts the letters on his desk for him to sign.
“Wait, please,” Herr Reuter says, then reads each letter before inscribing his name with a somewhat forced vigor under the typed “Yours faithfully.” Gilgi waits. The pale winter sun draws circles on the yellow cupboard, on the coarse cork matting, and on Herr Reuter’s fuzzy egg-shaped head.
“Sit down, please,” Herr Reuter says. Gilgi bypasses the good leather armchair where the clients sit, removes a few files and papers from the simple cane chair, and sits down. She gazes ahead of her incuriously, with her composed, expressionless professional countenance.
“Do you always look so unhappy?” Herr Reuter asks. That’s how it starts.
“I don’t look in the least unhappy.”
Gilgi is an experienced girl. She knows men, and what they variously want and don’t want, and how this is betrayed by the tone of their voices, their expressions, and their movements. If a man and a boss like Herr Reuter speaks in an uncertain voice, he’s in love, and if he’s in love, he wants something. Sooner or later. If he doesn’t get what he wants, he’s surprised, offended, and angry. The atmosphere between her and Herr Reuter has been building up for some time. Now it’s about to explode. Her colleague Fräulein Müller told her that Frau Reuter is away at the moment. That will accelerate the process.
Gilgi weighs things up. She has no desire to start a relationship with Herr Reuter, and she has no desire to mess up her job in his firm, and perhaps even to lose it. He’s a good boss. He pays overtime, treats his office staff well, is pleasant and courteous. Gilgi has had worse bosses.
She answers Herr Reuter’s questions politely, and decides to be slow on the uptake for as long as she possibly can. Lunch with him today? Unfortunately she has so little time. Herr Reuter becomes a little more insistent, and Gilgi promises to meet him after work, at two o’clock in the “Schwerthof” restaurant. Resisting too strongly might perhaps make her appear less harmless than she’d like.
A few hours later Gilgi is sitting with Herr Reuter in the “Schwerthof.” They’re up to coffee. Herr Reuter is smoking his first cigarette. He’s showing Gilgi photos of his wife and his child, as married men do when they’re prepared, despite minor pangs of conscience, to be unfaithful. “A most charming woman,” Gilgi says.
Herr Reuter smokes his second cigarette. The pictures of his wife and child have found their way back into his wallet. He talks a lot. Now and then Gilgi says Yes or No.
Herr Reuter smokes his third cigarette, and mentions in passing that he can’t have such really interesting conversations with his wife as he can with her. “Ohhh?” Gilgi replies. “Yes,” Herr Reuter says, and strokes the back of her hand a few times. “How young you are, I could be your father, missy.” He expects a vigorous disclaimer. Gilgi just smiles innocently, which Herr Reuter interprets in his favor.
He smokes his fourth cigarette. Suddenly he’s overcome by the urge to feel unhappy. His marriage is a failure, his life is a mess, he’s an old fool, his job is just buying and selling. He employs bitterness, self-mockery, and a touch of pathos. When he gets to “I should get away from it all,” he throws his shoulders back so firmly that he endangers the seams of his jacket, then orders two liqueurs. Gilgi prefers not to drink alcohol so early in the day.
Herr Reuter smokes his fifth cigarette. His hand strays onto Gilgi’s knee, and she removes it gently. “I feel so alone, couldn’t you be a little bit nice to me, child?” She likes him very much, Gilgi says, and looks at him with the tolerant pity which women feel for men whose attentions are simultaneously annoying and flattering.
As Herr Reuter is about to light his sixth cigarette, Gilgi announces that she has to go. No, she can’t stay, not a minute longer. She has her English class at four o’clock. “You’re an ambitious girl,” Herr Reuter says, disappointedly and admiringly.
Yes, she’ll meet him again tomorrow night at the Cathedral Hotel. Gilgi is friendly, pleasant, and accommodating. She has her plan ready. The waiter comes, and Gilgi insists on paying for her own lunch. She gets her way, and says goodbye to Herr Reuter, leaving him with the pleasant feeling of being loved “for himself.”
A few minutes later she’s on the phone to Olga.
“Hello, marzipan girl, I’d like you to come by, around eleven tonight; I have to work till then.”
“Love to, Gilgi,” Olga says in her round, friendly voice. “Is something up?”
“Nooo, nothing at all. I’d just like to ask you for a small favor.”
“Well, tell me what it is!” Olga is so nosy, Olga always wants to know everything right away.
“It can wait till eleven, Olga. See you.”
“See you.”
How nice that you’ve got Olga. Olga is the brightest color in Gilgi’s life. And if she didn’t have such a distaste for the word “romance,” you could say: for Gilgi, Olga represents romance. She’s looking forward to Olga’s visit. But you’re not to think about it beforehand. Your hour of laughter at eleven tonight has to be earned first.
Gilgi sits in the Berlitz School. “Learn Foreign Languages!” Gilgi is learning Spanish, English, French. Three lessons straight. When she finally makes it to her little attic room in Mittelstrasse, her head is buzzing with foreign words. “I want to be happy” … “sous les toits de Paris” … the dry instruction in foreign business correspondence is dissolved by the bright melodies of hit songs. “I want to be happy” … Gilgi looks longingly at the wide, padded divan. She’s a little tired, should she … just for a half-hour …? No time. “I want to be happy” … Gilgi winds up the gramophone. Richard Tauber as a pick-me-up. I kiss your hand, madame … She takes a samovar from the cupboard and brews tea. Takes off her jumper and skirt, hangs them carefully on the hook on the door, and slips into a yellow silk kimono. This little room is where she feels at home. She rented it so that she could work in peace. She pays for it, and it belongs to her. She had the walls hung with brown hessian. She bought the furniture gradually, piece by piece: divan, desk, cupboard, chair. Bought it all entirely with her own earnings. She did overtime to pay for the little Erika-brand typewriter and the gramophone.
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She winds up the gramophone again: For it can’t last forever … Haven’t you made something of yourself? You’ll make even more of yourself. She sits down at the desk, rests her head with its short brown hair on her hands, and for the time it takes to smoke a cigarette she does nothing at all. Thinks things over a little: so far, she’s saved twelve hundred marks. In a year from now, she can go to Paris for three months, to London for three months, and to Granada for three months. Maybe by herself, maybe with Olga. But she’s going. She’s calculated everything, and decided everything, exactly. If you can speak three foreign languages perfectly, then you’re more or less guaranteed against unemployment. And maybe one day she’ll give up office work anyway. She has other prospects. Has a talent for designing and making clothes like few others. When the young lady Gilgi goes out in the evening, men’s and women’s heads turn; and if she said she bought her dresses from Damm or Gerstel, people might believe her, although she’s made everything herself. She owns three evening gowns, and none of them cost more than twenty marks. Maybe she’ll open a small fashion studio one day in Paris or Berlin, maybe—maybe—oh, she’s still young, and she’s open to all ways of providing for herself, except as a wife, a film actress, or a beauty queen.
She reaches into the desk drawer and pulls out a pile of manuscript, an exercise book, and a battered novel: Jerome, Three Men in a Boat. She’s translating it into German, just for practice, at the moment. Maybe later she’ll find a way of translating for money. Gilgi writes. Writes, reads, crosses out, writes—until Olga arrives.
Pretty Olga, beautiful Olga! Suddenly, the austere little workroom smells like a summer garden, and Gilgi’s hard little face becomes softer and younger. Happy Olga! A well-disposed God attached a champagne cork to her soul. Whatever happens, Olga won’t go under. She has the most delightful blond hair, the softest, most radiant blonde’s face. She has the most carefree eyes, blue-gray, with cheeky little flecks in the iris. She has the lazy, langorous movements of a harem-girl, and the intellect of a Jewish essayist. She has no ties to anything or anyone, she’s the most independent being that Gilgi can imagine. She admires Olga, although she has neither the ability nor the desire ever to be anything like her.
“Do you want tea, marzipan girl? Apples, mandarins, bananas? I’ve got them all here.” How pretty you look, Olga! Gilgi can’t bring herself to say the words, and instead scolds: “More dirty marks on your blouse! How disgustingly slovenly you are!” Olga is lying on the divan, playing with some mandarin-peel: “I’ve really got to get organized now, the Americans are coming to Berlin in the spring.”
“Ahh.” Gilgi is upset. So in the spring Olga will be in Berlin, and then she’ll be traveling, here and there, who knows when she’ll come back to Cologne. At the moment she’s copying a few paintings in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum for an American family. As well as making loud posters for a cinema in Hohestrasse. Olga paints whatever people want. Whether she’s a great artist is something which Gilgi can’t judge. Olga herself says No. Perhaps she’s right. When she needs money, she works; when she has money, she travels. Often unaccompanied, sometimes accompanied.
“You said you needed a favor, Gilgi?”
“Yes. You have to take a man off my hands.”
“Is he a nice man?”
“Good off-the-peg stock—not your type.”
“So what am I supposed to do with him?”
“He’s my boss, he’s in love. If he realizes that I don’t like him, it’ll make things difficult at the office. You have to divert his attention from me.”
“Uh-huh. But if he’s in love with you, then he won’t let me …” Gilgi assumes her best woman-of-the-world expression.
“The guy’s not in love with me specifically, he’s just decided recently to be in love—generally. His attraction to me is arbitrary, a product of his imagination …”
“We’ll change his mind,” Olga says, discreetly pushing an apple-core behind the cushions of the divan. “So how shall we do it?” Gilgi outlines her plan briefly, Olga approves—only: “But how will I get rid of him again?”
“Oh, Olga!” Gilgi perches herself on the desk. “You’re so much more of a lady than I am—not because you’re already twenty-five—because you just are. Men don’t push so hard so fast with you as they do with a little girl like me, and anyway, after a couple of weeks you can tell him that you’re going on your travels.” Olga makes a gesture with her hand to convey that she feels herself more than capable of dealing with a situation like that.
Somewhere in Cologne, Herr Reuter (Hosiery and Lingerie, Wholesale) is lying in the marital bed which his wife has forsaken, suffering from sleeplessness and the desire to be ten years younger. I’ve got a little brown-haired girl—it’s touching to think how the little one is yearning for you …
In the attic room in Mittelstrasse Gilgi winds up the gramophone, Olga chooses the record: … If you’re coming to Hawaii / If the … Neither of them finds Herr Reuter interesting enough to warrant another minute’s conversation.
On Sunday Gilgi and Herr Reuter are sitting together in the Cathedral Hotel. Gilgi feels that she has eaten, Herr Reuter feels that he has dined. They’re drinking Haut-Sauternes. With each glass, Herr Reuter’s currant-black eyes narrow by fractions of a millimeter. The shape of Gilgi’s little breasts is clearly visible under her blue-gray velvet dress, convincing Herr Reuter that Gilgi is “the” woman who understands him. He tells her this, and he believes it. He lays his emotional life out in front of her like an excited poker player slamming down his cards. That’s the way he is. Gilgi acknowledges receipt of this information politely, and with a modicum of interest. You poor fool, if you were younger there’d be no need to waste any time on you. Stop it, enough with the lyricism, it doesn’t go with the pimple on your chin. Why can’t I just say: don’t speculate if you can’t accumulate, don’t invest emotional capital in a doomed venture. I can’t say that. You poor old man, your blend of Business Baroque would be destroyed by a simple No. All right, then! Ultimately all I care about is myself, isn’t it? About the hundred-fifty marks which I earn in your office every month, about working without you getting in the way, without having to put up with your cotton-candy emotions—all right, then, sir!
“Your health!”—“Your health!” Clink-clink. Herr Reuter is holding Gilgi’s hand, saying they shouldn’t talk so much, it’s time for them to … stop talking so much. There are so many people around. Well, if you consider that they all need hosiery and lingerie, then you have to approve of them and like them, but if they weren’t sitting here and still needed hosiery and lingerie—you’d like them even better. Waiters are also annoying when they’re standing around with nothing to do. “Scusmewaitah [Excuse me, waiter], another bottle!” Gilgi chooses not to hear Herr Reuter’s invitation to call him Friedrich; at this rate, it’ll be Fritz next.
A lady walks by, scanning all the tables. A beautiful lady, a lustrous lady. “An acquaintance of mine,” Gilgi says falteringly, while her left eye is flashing out the message: About time, Olga!
“Good evening, Fräulein Kron.”
“Good evening, Fräulein Jahn. May I introduce …”
“A pleasure,” Herr Reuter says, lying.
“Arranged to meet some acquaintances—after the theater—not here yet—so embarrassing—” Olga’s eyes express helplessness, her marzipan fingers run softly over the expensive Russian squirrel fur on which she has so far paid three installments. “Yes, if you …” Gilgi is visibly at a loss, disappointed, embarrassed. Herr Reuter comes to the rescue: “If you would like to sit with us until …” He’s a gentleman. Not willingly. “If I may! It’ll only be for a moment.” Olga looks at Herr Reuter with boundless gratitude. He helps her out of her coat. He’s a gentleman. Not unwillingly. He notices that other men envy him when they see Olga sitting down at his table. More supply creates more demand. Herr Reuter decides that Olga is beautiful. But she’s in the way nevertheless, because Gilgi’s little brown hand has now
retreated into the unreachable distance.
Olga tells stories of her travels to Cairo and Luxor and Spitzbergen. Gilgi goes to the telephone cabinet to call home. When she returns, Herr Reuter no longer thinks Olga is in the way.
After a while, Gilgi disappears to the bathroom for a quarter-hour. Herr Reuter remembers that, actually, he prefers blondes. He becomes witty. Olga looks at him admiringly, and Herr Reuter becomes convinced that he has underestimated himself his whole life long. Gilgi comes back, sits there quietly and modestly, and lets Olga outshine her. She’s an unremarkable little girl. Herr Reuter recalls some rather rusty principles: not to get romantically involved with one’s employees, and so on.
Gilgi goes into the foyer for ten minutes in search of a newspaper. Olga’s fresh, rosy blonde’s skin shimmers through cream-colored lace, convincing Herr Reuter that Olga is “the” woman who understands him.
A half-hour later he escorts the ladies home: first Gilgi, then Olga.
EARLY IN THE MORNING, A QUARTER-HOUR before the alarm clock is due to ring, Frau Kron comes into Gilgi’s room and sits down on the side of her bed. She strokes Gilgi’s bare arms and narrow, little-girl’s shoulders with her honest, roughened housewife’s hands. For a moment Gilgi prefers not to feel surprised by these unexpected caresses, nor to repel them. The familiar closeness of her mother’s body, the faint aroma of laundry soap on her hands, give Gilgi a feeling of primitive comfort like a baby animal which is safe in its nest.
“Jilgi, my child, you do love me, don’t you?”
“What’s going on?” Gilgi sits bolt upright, looking startled and mistrustful.
“You do love me, don’t you, Jilgi?”
Gilgi looks at her mother: her puffy cheeks are blazing red, as they do after particularly energetic washing or cake-baking days. Gilgi realizes that the question is only a starting point, heaven knows of what. Odd starting point. Superfluous question. She’s never thought about whether she loves her mother. She looks at Frau Kron’s broad, fleshy back with compassion.
