Authors: Irmgard Keun
Literature, music, painting—it’s a funny thing, art. One person’s Rubinstein—is another’s dance-band leader, one person’s Rembrandt—is another’s commercial artist. What can you do? It’s a long way to Tipperary—it’s a long way to … there …
THAT’S HOW YOU STROLL THROUGH YOUR DAYS—playful, in love, doing the thousand silly things that add up to doing nothing. Not thinking much about tomorrow, not thinking at all about the day after. And it’s only at seven in the morning, when—from long habit—her eyes open like two curtains falling back, that Gilgi feels the faint little pangs of a bad conscience before falling asleep again.
Once Olga visits her briefly. Is disturbed and amazed and not at all approving of the transformation in Gilgi’s life. Even though she used to talk quite differently.—
“It’s all well and good, little Gilgi, little pocket-sized Tannhäuser—but why are you doing such stupid things? Living together in this compacted, intense way can only cause trouble in the end. Gilgi—hey—listen to me!” The girl’s eyes are quite glassy. “Surely you must know what you want! If you go on like this, he’ll get sick of you one day—or you of him. You silly girl—first you go on like a petty-bourgeois wife, a dutiful Martha—no man alive can stand the shock of suddenly discovering that he has to be grateful to a woman. Well, and now—you’re sacrificing everything, and of course you feel uncomfortable in your own skin. God, why not lose your inhibitions for once! But then to cut yourself off so completely from all your previous interests!—And one day you’ll realize that it’s impossible for the poor man to do for you what you’re doing
for him, and then you won’t forgive him for your stupidity. Our own mistakes are always the ones which we hold against other people …”
“So—what—should—I—do?—I know, Olga, everything I’m doing is wrong. I can’t see my way clear anymore. Everything in me is confused—don’t know what I want anymore—so what should I do?”
“Don’t make him the foundation of your life, don’t bet everything on one card. How tired you look! You need your work and your independence, you …”
“Stop it, Olga, stop it—my thoughts can’t follow you any further.” She’s standing in the middle of the room, the little one, holding her hands over her ears—so what should I do? Sinks, falls, cries out—“I want someone, someone, someone—don’t belong anywhere—why this one in particular? No idea—but I want—to have him—to keep him—I want, I want, I want …”
“Gilgi,” Olga says, and her voice is bursting with love and the desire to comfort. She kneels beside the little one, puts an arm around her shoulder, speaks words which give encouragement with her frivolous hands, asks questions which give sympathy to the mottled, helpless little face, listens with an attentiveness which unites her to the thin, failing voice—“and you’re together at night and walk beside each other during the day, without a single word that binds you—you only catch words which are soap-bubbles. And there’s something somewhere that I don’t understand—my thoughts hit a wall—and—can—anyone—understand—that—Olga, understand that you’re so ashamed when you remember all the important things? And are afraid of something that you don’t understand and that isn’t a word? And you’re all ripped up, and have
typewriter words and clockwork words and everyday words and don’t want to think about yourself and should think about yourself.—I love him so much, Olga—no, don’t look at me …” And the never-tender little girl Gilgi embraces her friend, moves her lips over her face and neck, her lips are hot … “Silly little girl,” Olga says and has to love Gilgi in the way that everyone who turns their face to the sun and is saturated with light has to love sad tenderness.
“My God, Olga”—Gilgi’s hand gropes over the floor—“that’s a rug, isn’t it? And you’re the sweet, blond, radiant marzipan girl, and I …” she jumps up, her firm, bright Gilgi-voice has returned, “I, Olga, I’ve been stung by a wild hormone—I’m crazy about a man—c’est tout. Nothing unusual, happens in the best families.” She sits down on the windowsill, swings her legs—“he’ll have had enough of me one day—there it is. Oh yes, tell me, Olga, am I imagining it, or has Houbigant’s ochre face-powder really got worse?”
“I think Hudnut’s powder is better. And—Gilgi—I know a lot of people in Berlin, I could get you a job there as a secretary—anyway: you know I have the egotistical habit of giving myself absolution for my own sins by helping the people I like when they happen to need it … there, take some of my powder if yours is no good.” Gilgi turns her face away with a hard little jerk—you’ve become so sensitive, so exposed to every kind word—you have to bust out crying when someone says something nice to you, it’s just because—“I’m full of nerves, marzipan girl—c’est l’amour—ah, Martin! Speak of the Devil … Why do you have to go so soon, Olga?”
“No, kids, you can’t blame me for that. When I’m together with people who are in love—firstly I get sick,
secondly I turn green and yellow with envy … so! For the sake of my complexion … See you!”
Gilgi is lying in bed. She’s asleep. Wakes up: one in the morning. Martin has gone out. Why shouldn’t a man go out by himself sometimes? That’s quite in order. But why hasn’t he got back yet? Surely nothing can have happened to him?… Can it?… Nonsense, he wouldn’t cheat on her. It’s not as if they’re married.
Gilgi can’t stand it in bed anymore. Gets up, walks up and down the room. How can you be so listless and so tired, tired from doing nothing all day? You never used to be this tired. And why can’t you be by yourself anymore? You’ve got a pathological fear of being by yourself. Don’t just walk up and down so pointlessly, now, do something, some work. Gilgi pulls on her dressing gown. Switches on the lights in all the rooms, nothing is too bright. Looks uncared-for, the apartment. Gilgi fetches a broom and some rags and a pail from the kitchen, starts scrubbing and cleaning—in the middle of the night. She works until her arms start to hurt, which makes her feel very cheerful and healthy. And Olga is quite right when she says that not working doesn’t agree with her.
Gilgi goes into Martin’s room—his writing-room, if you like—calling it a workroom would seem just slightly exaggerated, even to Gilgi. There are some pages with writing on them on the desk, Gilgi reads a little of them: they’re about the customs and traditions of South Sea Islanders—“it’ll be quite a long, detailed job,” Martin said once—“and is sure to take at least two years.” Gilgi puts the papers back carefully, pointing this way and that—just
as they had been. Because you read that somewhere once: how upset men get when women with a mania for tidiness attack their writing desks. Except—presumably you’re allowed to pick up what’s on the floor. Bills! A whole bundle. All unpaid. Gilgi holds them with her fingertips, just as if they were poisonous. Which they are, really. She doesn’t want to look at them, or to talk about them with Martin anymore, either, never again. Don’t worry yourself about them—don’t think about them at all. But it’s terrible when you leave the building together and stroll immediately and without speaking to the other side of the street, just so that you don’t have to go past the delicatessen, because … no, that kind of thing is no fun, and no matter how many times you say that it’s a great joke and a big laugh, you’re always lying.
Letters, letters. From all kinds of places. Gilgi puts them into a pile. They’re all lying around quite openly, the letters. He has no secrets from her, does Martin. Funny habit, chucking everything on the floor. Gilgi feels a kind of housewifely pride well up in her when she sees an Amsterdam postmark on one letter. The little Dutch girl! Oh, she knows the story. The poor child is still in love with Martin. No reason why he shouldn’t write her a few friendly words now and then, and of course no reason why he should write her more than that. Gilgi wouldn’t dream of reading the letter, because it’s nothing to do with her, and anyway it’s handwritten. Handwritten letters seem so importunately intimate, so embarrassingly self-revelatory—this one finds its way into the drawer with the others. Right—the floor looks more or less as it should now. There—another letter under the desk. From Zurich—from Martin’s brother—from Christoph. Engagingly clear
typescript.— … and really it’s high time that you finally see reason … — … don’t know what you think you can live on if you take your money now … Gilgi unfolds the letter, it’s definitely worth knowing what Christoph has to say: ah, Martin wanted his money, and Christoph wants to hang on to it. That’s good! It explains why there’s been no talk of going away recently.
Gilgi is sitting on the chaise longue, with her feet propped on the edge of the scrubbing pail, and her left arm wrapped around the handle of the broom. The letter is lying on her lap. She shakes her head, understanding less than ever. Looks five years into the future. A grim vision: Martin in rags, Martin wandering around half- or three-fourths-starved, she wandering with him. Salvation Army, homeless shelter, confidence tricks—unedifying words, particularly unedifying ideas. You ought to make a decision, you ought to … suddenly she feels ice-cold, her teeth start to chatter. Where has Martin got to? It’s better not to look at the clock, it’ll just make you nervous. Goose bumps crawl over her back and arms, the bright lights suddenly hurt her eyes, stabbing at her face. And if Martin didn’t come back … this completely idiotic thought occupies one second, but plunges you immediately into a world of gray and cold, ice and melancholy, and everything looks like the dirty blackish water in the scrubbing pail, and now your left slipper falls into the pail, to top everything off. Gilgi fishes it morosely out of the slimy liquid, limps to the window, puts the slipper on the sill outside: it can dry off there, and if the wind blows it into the front garden Martin will have to fetch it up tomorrow morning.
Gilgi lies down in bed again. Pushes the letter from Christoph under the pillow—it rustles. You ought to make
a decision. When Martin comes, you’ll say to him, you’ll say to him: quite calmly and sensibly—Martin, my darling, you have to understand—if you like me even a little bit, then you’ll want me to feel well and contented, and that’s why I’m going to Badstrasse tomorrow, to the labor office—about the benefits and about a new job—later. I’m going to—we’re going to—share the household expenses, and after this we won’t talk about it anymore. And if this is just a passing mood on my part—well, then there’s nothing you should respect more than another person’s moods, especially the ones that make life easier for you. I’ll say to him—when he comes, when he—my God, why doesn’t he come!
And Gilgi waits. Minutes pass so slowly, slowly, the darkness is oppressive and sad, and the silence hums with that disturbing absence of sound that hurts you and makes you afraid. And I’ll say to him … I—my God, he has to come, he has to, he has to, he has to. And there’s a magic lantern in the room, images flicker in the dark, imaginings—you don’t want to look at them, must look, precisely because you don’t want to. Images, images … Martin in an accident, Martin dead … And you feel like a criminal and burn with shock because you can imagine such things, and it’s like how as a child you were suddenly seized by the idea that your mother had died, and the only reason you can imagine something like that is because you’re incapable of believing it. And the smell of Martin’s warm healthy skin on the pillows, so much life on the pillows, whispered words and you and me and longing and … angular images in the dark, and you want to see them, want to hurt yourself. Sooner a hard pain than this soft creeping longing, sooner—Craccck! goes the door. A step and a breath, you
fall into the sound. “Ah, there you are!” You can say it quite calmly at the same time as you’re overwhelmed with joy, and beneath that joy there’s just a very tiny, contradictory feeling of shame and disappointment because this excess of blood-chilling fears was so unnecessary and ridiculous.
There’s a rainbow round my shoulder … Martin whistles and sits down next to Gilgi on the side of the bed. The pale light from the lamp on the night-table brushes over his hands, hands full of tenderness and love for life. And he tells her all about where he’s been: at the Rhine harbor, on a freighter with an old Dutch sailor, drinking toddy and playing cards and sinking thousands of meters below sea level under the weight of the man’s tall tales …
Martin—is sitting beside me, with his hat on his knees, it’s a kind of miracle that he’s here now. And suddenly the waiting seems to gain a purpose. It’s so nice to have waited for a man you love. Waiting made you so pleased to see him. And now he’s here, that means so much. So much light. And he’s speaking with his lips, his shoulders, speaking—and every word is a little human being, has legs, walks around the room—walks up to you, is round and tangible, you can put your arms around it … speaking with a quiet, soft voice, very melodious, a little hoarse—a little red drop of blood in the word. Bright light in dark eyes. I suppose they have to be dark, his eyes, to show such a silver light. And young dark hair, pressed into funny little curls at the back and sides by the hat-brim. He speaks: “The smell of fish and tar—an enchanted river—smooth water, unyielding and dark. Reflected lights—silver streaks—shimmering promises. Air like cool silk. Tired blue sky—like the eyes of a woman who knows herself so well that she becomes guileless again. An insistent
smell of tobacco—and soft, curly clouds of smoke—fairy tales breathed into the air. A little Frans Hals child. An old salt—always drunk as a matter of principle, his nose—a permanent state of euphoria. A little geranium with sweet, silly flat leaves, entrancingly unconscious of their severity of form, every single leaf a professor of mathematics, and their blossoms—so shamelessly red, as carelessly red as a little Mexican hooker—sweet little hooker—a pure red—a color unadulterated by any mish-mash morality. A great, round nocturnal silence—a circle—a shrill yell falls from the bank — — the secret of contrasts, my little Gilgi. A secret in a thousand boxes—when you open the first box, you find the second one hidden inside it—and so on, forever—you know a little bit more each time and—a great deal less.”
He’s rather drunk, Martin—there’s a rainbow round my shoulder …
Gilgi puts her hand on his chin, presses his head down towards her—“Oh, Martin, my darling …”—teeth which are so hungry for life, probably wants to eat up the whole world! He’s so in love with life, loves everything, everyone—that has nothing to do with milksop-tolerance and rolled-oat-kindness—just loves everything because he simply can’t do otherwise. And you understand that, maybe it’s the only thing you agree about: Life is a fine thing! Its comforts and burdens, its sadnesses and joys. Life is a fine thing. You’ll never let anyone say anything different. Never. Anyone.