Gilgi

by Irmgard Keun

  “ ’Lo, Gilgi.” Pit gives her his hand and sits down at the table, clapping the hooker on the shoulder: “Well, how’re things, little Lena?”

  “How d’you think they are? They’re crap.” Lena gets up. “S’long, Pit—s’long, Frollein—gotta go.”

  “Pit,” Gilgi begins after a pause, “Pit, you never told me what kind of man your father is, and what’s your mother like, and—Pit, I’d like to tell you about — — —”

  Pit jumps down her throat. “Why are you butting in on me here, what do you want? Since when have you been interested in conducting psychological studies?”

  “Don’t talk such garbage, Pit!” Gilgi looks pale and tired: “You’ve got so angry recently, Pit.” That’s politics for you, she thinks, it makes people so unpleasant, really nasty.

  “Yes, I know, Gilgi.” For a moment, Pit looks like a woebegone schoolboy. “Oh, you can’t find me anything like as disgusting as I find myself. I’m so full of bitterness and hate, all I can see is injustice and prejudice.” And then he starts with his Socialism again, and all the things that have to be changed, and Gilgi sits there on the lookout for a moment when she can interrupt him and tell him about the things which are more important to her, and have more to do with her, just now. All right, private capital can be abolished for all she cares—and the anti-abortion law—it should have been repealed ages ago, of course, though maybe she owes her life to it—and the whole economic system, yes—. Why do people who talk about politics always have to make it so utterly complicated and confusing—and the revolution after the war was messed up—“oh, Pit, I can’t go on anymore!”

  “What, you—you just go your way without caring, without getting involved, Gilgi, did you actually read those books about political economy which I gave you?”

  “I don’t understand them, Pit. I’m not terribly clever, and when I start thinking about that stuff I lose my footing, I need whatever brains I’ve got for myself and my career—”

  “Your self-importance is disgusting!”

  “Well, for crying out loud, who should I find important if not myself! I just don’t believe, I think it’s a damn lie when someone says that he thinks of the community first and himself second. Who is the community, anyway? It has no face, it’s not a human being you can love, and therefore want to help. Shut up, Pit, I’m talking! You’re so terribly vain, you guys, you think that you’re something special and that you’re doing something special. You always see yourselves as heroes, and believe that the world couldn’t run properly without you. And to be heroic, you need something which challenges you, which you can fight against, and if it doesn’t exist you just invent it—”

  “You can keep that lecture for those Nazi people.” Pit stands up. “I’m sorry for you, Gilgi, if you can’t understand that we won’t find any peace until—what’s the point of trying to explain it to you, you superficial little thing, you.” Pit sits down at the piano again—Maria, Maria, listen—do …

  That’s Pit for you! Is it some kind of crime if you want to go your way quietly and decently and keeping well away from politics? And what exactly is there to stop him finding any peace? Maybe Pit’s right after all—about this and that. Maybe you should—oh, it’s better not to think about it, you don’t know where it would lead if once you started. Gilgi rests her head on her hands. Red letters: What are you letting happen to your life?… Two by the Rhine / Two side by side / Your hand in mine … One of the traveling salesmen has fallen asleep, he’s snoring, his head is wobbling, the red lanterns are wobbling, the piano is wobbling, the bust of Dante on it is wobbling. Dante in a dive like this! How did you, pigeon … With the tip of her tongue, Gilgi licks up a tear which has rolled down her face at the speed of a slow-motion film. She’s surprised at herself for not being surprised at herself, and she’d think about that if it wasn’t too complicated for her. Why is Pit so horrible to me? He’s my best friend, after all! She still hasn’t told him her story yet, but now she doesn’t want to. The whole atmosphere here, the semi-darkness—she can’t stand it anymore.

  Gilgi pays for the port. Without giving Pit another glance, she walks past him to the door. Onto the street. She’s going home. Home?

  Anyway, Gilgi has other things to do besides looking for her parents. She decides not to worry about the matter for the moment. No doubt she’ll find an opportunity to make the acquaintance of the Greif family sooner or later.

  Gilgi is as gentle as a turtle-dove with the Krons. She’s postponed her decision to leave home until after Carnival, and she’s resolved to be as nice and pleasant as anyone possibly could be while she’s still there. She takes her mother to the movies and the Konditorei. Doesn’t complain when a film is sickeningly sentimental, and watches fearfully but silently as the massively overweight Frau Kron heedlessly devours whole mountain ranges of cream slices, chocolate cupcakes, and fruit tartlets.

  They’re expecting a visit from Frau Kron’s sister and her two daughters from Hamburg. Their relatives want to experience Carnival in Cologne—and of course they haven’t seen each other for ages. The three ladies from Hamburg will stay with the Krons. The house is bursting with excitement. A bed and a divan are moved into Gilgi’s room—for her two cousins. Everything is turned upside down. An orgy of cleaning begins: “Hetty is so finicky,” and Frau Kron wants to do honor to her household. When Gilgi gets home after work, she races through the rooms with the vacuum cleaner, hangs new curtains at the windows, waxes the parquet floor in the parlor. And she loves doing all of it. She has a heartfelt desire to make herself useful. But then she has to accompany her mother to the station, to fetch the relatives, and she doesn’t think that’s so useful.

  Aunt Hetty and Young Gerda and Young Irene tumble onto the platform with clamor and screeching and “No!” and “Wow!” and a frenzy of embraces. Grown up so much! And the children! Yes, who would’ve thought it—after such a long time—and you’re looking so good, Hetty!—But not as good as you, Berta! When Aunt Hetty gives her a juicy kiss, Gilgi feels like a cat which has been rubbed up the wrong way. She’d very much like to wipe her mouth, because it feels so wet above her top lip, but they’re always watching her.

  “No, we can take the streetcar, Hetty.” Frau Kron is a little overcome by it all, but she’s still thinking economically.

  “Of course, we’ve always wanted to see the Rhine—but the War! And then the Occupation! You poor dears, how you must have suffered.” Aunt Hetty whispers, and looks fearfully all around. Of course, the English troops have left, but she’s still not quite sure—you can never know … Frau Kron’s eyes express pain: “Yes, they were difficult times for us, Hetty.” Frau Kron enjoys being commiserated with.

  Then they stop outside the cathedral. “Wow, isn’t it big!” Young Gerda is full of admiration. “You don’t miss much, do you, Gerda dear?” Gilgi says amiably. No, Young Gerda and Young Irene don’t have jobs, they help at home a little—and they’ll probably get married soon. Aunt Hetty isn’t in favor of the new ideas, though she picks out the ones which suit her: for example, Young Gerda is twenty-six and Young Irene is thirty, and before the war that would have been old for an unmarried woman, but it’s not anymore.

  Gilgi sits at home with her delightful relatives for the whole evening. Young Irene and Young Gerda show off their Carnival costumes. Young Gerda skips around the room in her pixie costume—her legs are rather thick, but on the other hand she’s quite small up top—and Young Irene wriggles cheekily on the arm of the green plush sofa, admiring her cute Pierrot outfit. While the girls aren’t as beautiful as Aunt Hetty says, they’re not quite as washed-out and unattractive as Frau Kron privately believes.

  It’s really time to go to bed, but they want to stay up until Herr Kron comes home. Aunt Hetty is lying on the sofa. She’s been exhausted by the journey, her feet have swollen up—“quite takes it out of you, a train trip like that.” Frau Kron is tired too. Young Gerda and Young Irene are still hopping around rather listlessly in their costumes. Gi
lgi borrowed a travel book from the library that morning—she’d like to read, but that would be considered impolite. Everyone is getting on everyone else’s nerves a little, everyone would like to do something other than what she’s doing just now. But everyone keeps smiling, preserving the impression that they have lots and lots in common.

  Gilgi is kept awake half the night. Her cousins are overcome by the need to talk which usually arises when young women are lying in bed. Gilgi is on the chaise longue. There’s a bed on her right—and a bed on her left. Young Gerda is lying on her right—and Young Irene on her left. The two silly cows fill the space above her with their mooing—chatter about dancing and men and maybe-they’ll-get-engagedments. Whenever Young Irene mentions a certain Arthur, Young Gerda squeaks like a frog that’s in the middle of being run over. Gilgi is vouchsafed confused explanations: well, Arthur is—and Arthur was—and Arthur will—“no, no, no, Renie, don’t tell!” Gilgi tosses from one side to the other. Holds her nose: before Young Gerda went to bed, she made liberal applications of an anti-freckle ointment which is now polluting the whole room with its stink.

  In the morning, Gilgi staggers out of her temporary bed, tired to death. Frau Kron had tapped on the door. Gilgi had turned off her alarm, because of course Young Gerda and Young Irene aren’t to be woken. They’re to have a nice long sleep in. Gilgi does her exercises. Now and then she casts baleful glances on the two sleeping beauties, with their knotted straw-blond hair, pasty faces, and slightly oily noses. Layabouts! An incitement to class hatred! These people who don’t work, ambling so idiotically, frivolously, dozily through their lives—Gilgi can’t stand them.

  When she arrives at the office she feels good, and happy. She didn’t ride on the streetcar, but walked, which takes just under an hour. Her clothes smell of the fresh air, and her face, which is usually pale brown, has a touch of red.

  She’s the first. She’s come ten minutes too early. Oh, she’s often there too early, and never a minute too late. She takes her steno pad out of the drawer almost lovingly. Slips the cloth cover off her typewriter, cleans the typeface of each key, and puts in a new ribbon. A new ribbon always gives her a little lift.

  Fat Müller arrives, followed closely by little Behrend. “Morn’.”—“Morn’.” They sit next to Gilgi. They’re both nice girls—a bit cheeky and careless, but not nasty.

  Fat Müller puts a pile of sandwiches, a vacuum flask with coffee, and a cup without a handle on the table in front of her. Little Behrend is talking about last night. “So then he says to me …” she whispers to Müller, which doesn’t bother Gilgi a bit, the two are great friends, and anyway Behrend’s experiences aren’t of the kind to be confided to people who are just colleagues. Sometimes you might think that Behrend only has adventures the night before so that she can tell Müller about them the morning after. Müller is too fat and too passive to have adventures herself, she’s satisfied just to hear about them—as though Behrend lives for her too. Crazy kid. Cute, with her curly black hair and her round brown eyes—a face like a squirrel. And she’s always on the move, always has something going on, always has the latest hit song in her head and in her blood. Now she’s sitting on the desk, dangling her pretty, cheeky legs: “… and then when the band plays—really sweet and schmaltzy—and I’m with a good-looking guy—well, I don’t know what a girl’s supposed to do, so that nothing happens afterwards …” She looks enquiringly at Gilgi. “You just can’t say No,” fat Mueller says triumphantly. Little Behrend makes a sour face, then she laughs: “No, I can’t.” She pirouettes over to Accounts and steals a few indelible pencils … For it can’t last forehever … “just think, one day you’re fifty and men don’t want to kiss you anymore!” She tugs at her blouse—a gift from some guy. Why shouldn’t some guy give her a blouse? That’s not the sign of a bad girl, not by a long way. She can’t buy anything for herself, has to give all her salary to her mother. Gilgi admires the blouse. It’s very elegant—with hand-stitched embroidery—and doesn’t go at all with the threadbare little skirt and the worn-out cheap shoes. Gilgi likes tarty little Behrend a thousand times more than her well-behaved cousins. She’s as nippy and hard-working as an ant, and always happy and helpful.

  After work Gilgi visits Olga. “My God, Olga, are you sick?”

  Olga is lying in bed, with a wet handkerchief on her forehead, and melancholy in her eyes. “I’m not sick, it’s just that I was at a masked ball, now I feel queasy.”

  Gilgi picks up a few articles of clothing from the floor and sits down on the side of Olga’s bed: “Drank too much?”—“Never been so sober in all my life,” Olga complains. “What was that? Why did I go? God, I’m living here like a combination of a Trappist monk and a Benedictine nun—I thought: have a little fun for once. Course, I must be suffering from advanced hardening of the arteries, deciding to go to a masked ball, of all things: the petty bourgeoisie stepping out—couples kissing like crazy, I won’t be able to stand the sight of couples kissing for at least the next year—it stank of sweat and cold cigar ash, disgusting! I believe my hair still stinks of smoke even now … could you hand me the bottle of lavender water from the table? What? It’s on the floor? Is it broken? No? Well, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t have been on the floor. Aaach, I just find life so revolting.” For a few seconds, Olga is dripping with Weltschmerz. For a few seconds only, then she throws out her arms, sits up with a jerk, the compress slips off, damp blond curls are stuck to Olga’s forehead. She takes a photograph from under her pillow, shows it to Gilgi: a man’s face, with good features. “Take a look at him, Gilgi—would you believe that I was married to him for six months?” No, Gilgi wouldn’t. She makes an impatient gesture, she knows the story of Olga’s marriage, and Olga has held Franzi’s photo under her nose a hundred times before. “Oh, Franzi!” Olga slobbers on the picture. “I do love him, even now—but only when I’m not with him. When we were together, it was terrible. He was as jealous as a touring-company Othello. Such a smart man, but—whatever you do—the point where being a man starts is the point where being smart stops. I became quite dazed. There was always shouting, shouting, shouting—about nothing. I mustn’t look from the top down, nor from the bottom up, and sideways was completely out of the question. But you’ve got to be allowed to look, one way or another. I was already getting my first worry-lines, all my reserves of humor were used up, all …”

  Gilgi snatches Olga’s photo of Franzi away from her, stuffs it into the drawer of the night-table. She knows the story. “You’re right, I’m chattering like an old washerwoman” and Olga jumps out of bed with both feet, fiddles with the radio set: six stations at once, three foreign and three German.

  “Have you gone nuts, Olga?”

  “Of course not—this is just how it should be: radio—Rrroma—Napoli—Wonderful! I’ve got the whole world in my room—Budapest—London—Amsterdam—Munich—let’s see if we can add a few more stations to the list now.” Gilgi protests vigorously. “Unimaginative creature!” Olga scolds, fishes in the depths of her wardrobe, re-emerges with a pair of light-colored suede shoes: “You don’t seem to be in an overwhelmingly good mood either, young Gilgi! What? Relatives staying in the apartment? Dreadful. People who stay with their relatives deserve nothing better.” Gilgi picks up a pair of stockings from the carpet. Olga is combing her short, blond curls at the mirror. “Oh, Gilgi, I’m looking forward to summer! I’ll go to Majorca. You know, you can live fantastically cheaply there. Sun and air and blue sky—you get them all for free. And the people there talk a language that I don’t understand. Can you imagine, Gilgi, how magical it is to hear just a melody of words, without understanding all the nonsense that lies behind them?”

  Gilgi has pulled Olga’s stockings over her hand and is looking reproachfully at the toe, where her fingers poke through. “Do you have any darning thread?”

  “No.—Listen, Gilgi, if I get enough money, you can come with me, as my guest. Gilgi—doing nothing, lying in the sun—oh, you’ve got no idea ho
w beautiful life can be.”

  “Olga, if you get some money, you’ll have to save it. Don’t you ever think about the future?”

  “Yes, I do.” Olga drops onto the bed next to Gilgi and pulls the holey stockings from her hand. “Give them to me. I have to put them on.—Do I think about my future? Take a look in the drawer of the night-table—there should still be a ticket for the lottery in aid of building the cathedral.—Will you come with me, Gilgi?”

  “I can’t, Olga.” Gilgi has folded her hands on her knees. “I—you see, Olga—I can give so little, and that means I can’t take anything. And I wouldn’t have time, I have to work.”

  Olga strokes Gilgi’s hair like a grandmother: “The sober soul of a little shopkeeper! If only you’d tell me what you’re aiming for! What do you want—what do you wish for—what are you longing for?”

  Gilgi pulls a face, as though she’d just drunk vinegar. Longing! A word which she can’t stomach. “I want to work, want to get on, want to be self-supporting and independent—I have to get all of that step by step. At the moment I’m learning my languages—I’m saving money—maybe in a few years I’ll have my own apartment, and maybe one day I’ll see my way clear to setting up my own business.”

  “You poor little beast of burden! And you’re wasting the best years of your young life working towards that!” Olga wants to express her sympathy by stroking Gilgi’s hair again, but her hand touches empty space, Gilgi has thrown her head back angrily. “You don’t need to feel sorry for me, Olga, I think my life’s wonderful. I like the feeling of creating something. If someone gave me a million today, I’d—take it, but I wouldn’t be overjoyed at all. I like the feeling of getting on by my own efforts.” Gilgi jumps up, strides up and down the room, looking for the words. She wants to prove to Olga that she’s happy, and has good reason to be. “I’m not talented, Olga—I can’t paint pictures or write books, I’m Fräulein Average, but I don’t see why that means I should give up. And what I can make of myself, I will make of myself. I’ll always be working and always be learning something new, and I want to stay healthy and pretty for just as long as it’s possible—I’ll take up the breast-stroke again in summer, I—don’t laugh like such an idiot, Olga—you’ve got to understand that it makes me happy when everything in my life is so well-ordered and well-regulated. And once I leave home, I’ll be completely happy, once there’s not a single person on earth that I have to pretend to or tell lies to about anything. And—Olga—yes, how can I explain it to you—the fact that my ambitions are never bigger than the chances of me achieving them is what makes me free, and …”