After Midnight

by Irmgard Keun

  Betty is still shedding tears. Damp cold creeps in through the cracks around the window. A spider is making its way down the whitewashed wall on long, spindly legs. “Spider at night—all will come right.” Well, maybe all will yet come right. What can come right?

  The tap is dripping in a maddening, irregular way. Drip. I count to seven—drip. I count to seven again, then eight, nine, ten, eleven—ah, at last: drip! I am freezing in my pink silk dress. It has a dark red velvet ribbon round the waist. Do I look pretty? Haven’t had time to appreciate my own appearance yet. Drip.

  “Stop crying, Betty dear, do stop crying. I’ll go and look for Algin. I’ll go directly. I know the cafés he visits when he’s sad or angry and wants to get drunk. We could ring them up, of course, but he might tell them to say he wasn’t there. I’ll find him and bring him home. Now, you must go in there and talk to people while I’m gone, do you hear, Betty? You must sit down with Frau Aaron and take her mind off Dieter and Gerti.”

  Betty raises her head. “You must find him, Susanne,” she says in her thin, cool voice. “You’re his sister.”

  “Lore, Lore, Lore, oh, see the pretty girls of seventeen or so.…”

  Where’s my coat? I’m off to look for Algin. The apartment is full of gramophone music and streamers and laughter. What business is it of Betty’s, crying for Algin? Liska ought to be crying for him. It’s Liska’s right to cry for him, it’s Liska’s duty to cry for him. If anybody’s going to shed tears, it ought to be Liska.

  Liska is not crying. She is sitting in the hall with Dr. Breslauer, not listening to what he is saying, staring at the door with huge, burnt-out eyes. Because Heini hasn’t arrived yet.

  The hall is got up to look like a little taproom. We changed the whole apartment round this morning, so that it doesn’t look like an apartment at all, but more like a kind of restaurant, though you can’t feel as much at ease in it, as pleasantly unfamiliar as you do in a real restaurant, because it still smells like an ordinary apartment.

  You get an apartment disguised as a restaurant and all the furniture goes into disguise too. The dresser looks big and bold, covered with bottles of liquor and bowls of salad and plates of open sandwiches and filled rolls.

  A party like this costs a lot of money. Algin will have to pay for it. What with? He’s earning so little now. Algin’s got lethargic recently. Too lethargic to put up much resistance to anything.

  There’s a warm, insistent smell of roses in the apartment. Roses in bloom on all the tables, whole rosebushes growing out of big black vases on the floor in every corner of every room. Their dizzying fragrance makes my head ache. It’s only just spring, it’s the time for scentless flowers. There are snowdrops and bright little crocuses out in people’s front gardens. And a magnolia tree outside my window, with fat, silvery-white buds among its dark and leafless branches.

  Liska is looking beautiful. Breslauer’s humming a song. “Must I then, must I then, leave the town behind, while you, my dear, stay here …” He kisses Liska’s hand, slowly, fervently. His foot lies on the floor beside the leg of his chair as if it had snapped off and was groaning.

  The baby-faced old Englishman and one of the young ones come into the hall to have a beer after all that Mosel, and talk to Liska. I have to call her aside for a moment to tell her I’m going out to look for Algin.

  Liska really is looking beautiful. Her velvet dress suits her; it’s the colour of a pale tea rose. Maybe Heini actually will fall in love with her this evening. She is so alive, so trembling with life, you can’t help feeling it. As if her heart were beating in her wide, dark blue eyes, her glossy black hair, her warm white shoulders, her rounded little hands.

  The dim light makes all the women’s faces smooth and soft and gentle, too. What was it Heini once said? “Female flesh and butchered meat need clever lighting. Good lights are absolutely essential in a butcher’s shop or a nightclub.”

  “Liska, I’m going to look for Algin.”

  The doorbell rings. Frau Winter opens the door. “Sanna, oh, my God, Sanna!” says Liska, kissing me with her full, hot, red lips. There are crazy little notes of tears and laughter in her voice. “He’s here, Sanna, he’s come, I was nearly out of my mind thinking he wouldn’t come, Sanna.”

  Sure enough, Heini’s here. “Good evening, Frau Liska,” he says formally, kissing Liska’s hand. “Why, you look lovely, a beautiful barbarian; are your ears bleeding? What—wearing ruby earrings, are you? Most attractive.”

  Nothing else exists in the world for Liska now, nothing but Heini.

  “Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth; therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty. For he maketh sore, and bindeth up; he woundeth, and his hands make whole. He shall deliver thee in six troubles; yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee.” This was what the little man with the bristly white hair and the grey, owlish round eyes was saying.

  “Yes, well, the words of the Bible are very fine,” said Algin. “Very comforting to people still susceptible to comfort. I’m not. I’m dying slowly, cold, lonely, desperate. There’s no hate and no love left in my heart. I don’t want to kill anyone, I don’t want to kiss anyone, I’m as good as dead already.”

  I found Algin almost before I’d begun looking for him.

  I went out of the building. The streets were shiny black, like eels. Wet and slithery. You could see the breath of the sky—fluffy white mist. The night was still like a house, I thought, but its walls were beginning to shake, they would soon fall in, and then we’d be exposed, naked, helpless, in the broad light of day.

  I walked through the Taunus gardens. The earth had a damp, mouldy smell of cemeteries and strength. A car’s horn hooted, a deep, firm sound—it was in my mouth I heard it, rather than in my ears. I had to swallow it down. Oh, help me, God, I’m choking. Not a star out. Car headlights, just a faint bright glow. And then dark again.

  A dreadful calm came over my heart, numbing my fear, obliterating my grief. I believed in Algin’s death. I had no strength or wish to find him. I went into Bogener’s wine shop, where he goes on occasion. I wanted people to tell me Algin wasn’t there, Algin had killed himself. Then I could have fallen down dead or unconscious at last. Because I was weary to my inmost soul.

  But Algin was there. He was alive. Drunk, but alive all right. Sitting there with an old man with a bristly haircut. I knew the man by sight. He sits in Bogener’s wineshop every afternoon and every evening, by himself, circumspectly drinking half a bottle of claret. I knew his way of beckoning to the waiter. I knew his way of giving a tip. I knew his usual seat. I knew the newspaper he read, I knew the wine he drank. I knew when he came in and I knew when he left. I’d never spoken to him, never thought much about him, but he was familiar to me, familiar and unimportant as my big toenail. And to see him sitting in a different part of the café talking to Algin struck me as strange, mysterious and not quite right, as if my big toenail had suddenly taken the place of my eyelashes.

  “Algin, please come home.” Algin doesn’t stir. He is talking what sounds like a lot of nonsense to the bristly-haired man. It takes me a while to make head or tail of it at all.

  The bristly-haired man is called Jean Küppers. He used to have a button factory in Krefeld; now he has a good monthly pension. His wife was small and plump and cheerful. Her name was Sabine, and he called her Bina. She had a warm heart, her thoughts were simple and good. He loved her and always will. So her death made him sad, but not desperate, because if you despair at the death of a loved one you are despairing of yourself, your despair rises from the suspicion, the knowledge, that you’ll replace that person in your heart, forget the person and so lose them for ever. This was what Herr Jean Küppers was saying in his creaking, rather rusty voice. You could well believe he hadn’t made any use of that voice for some time.

  His wife Bina died ten years ago. That was when Herr Küppers retired from his factory and moved to Frankfurt to live with his son and his daughter-in-law. His son is a d
octor. “A good lad, doesn’t drink and doesn’t gamble, but don’t ever let him treat you if you’re sick, Jean,” Bina had told her husband ten years ago. Personally I think it’s silly to say someone’s good because he doesn’t drink or gamble. If you stop to think of it, you realize what an awful lot of nonsense people talk.

  Well, Herr Küppers gave his son and daughter-in-law a good deal of money every month so that he could live with them. But he never felt really at ease there, though he didn’t consciously notice he wasn’t feeling at ease. He didn’t want to notice. His feelings were tired and apathetic. They persuaded him they were being very kind, doing him a good turn, him being so old and all. He accepted all they did and said, and he gave them money over and above the money for his keep every month. Because his daughter-in-law, Lucie, had all sorts of ways of asking for the money she needed and wanted: nicely, nastily, gently, roughly. She has pretty, brown curls, put in by the hairdresser, sweet, red, full lips, and a cold and tinny babble of a voice. Herr Küppers kept on giving her money. Not because he liked her but because he didn’t like her, never had. So he had a guilty conscience, and that’s why he gave the money. His son joined the SA—well, that was none of old Herr Küppers’s business, was it? He didn’t bother about politics any more, didn’t bother about his family any more, didn’t bother about himself any more either. He even thought his little granddaughter was vain and cold and unattractive.

  Waiters in black and white were hurrying about the café; words and thoughts were spilling out of my head. Dear God, make me good.

  Lucie, the daughter-in-law, wanted money for a new dress. He gave her the money; she bought the dress. It suited her. She looked a new woman in it. She entertained her husband’s superior officer in the SA in the sitting room, just as thousands of young women before her had entertained their husbands’ superior officers. She let him kiss her, just like thousands of young women before her, even though they shouldn’t. It so happened that old Herr Küppers came into the room then with his son.

  Old Herr Küppers saw all this as the way out of a dismal period. Young Herr Küppers didn’t want to know. He was not keen on arguing with Nazi officials, and he thought his wife was a clever woman. Three weeks later, however, he decided on a divorce, because close scrutiny of her papers showed that she had a Jewish grandmother. He couldn’t forgive that; he was ashamed of his wife. As for old Herr Küppers, he was now saying he found life with his son and daughter-in-law most distasteful. He wants to leave, he was saying. Today. He wants to be alone. If Algin likes, however, he’ll take him along.

  It is old Herr Küppers’s seventieth birthday tomorrow, and that is what’s brought all this to the front of his mind. He believes what they say about people changing entirely every seven years. Everything is ready for his birthday party at his son’s house tomorrow, all the family asked from Krefeld and Frankfurt and Berlin. His granddaughter has learnt a poem, his daughter-in-law, with the Jewish grandmother, has been practising the Badenweiler March on the piano, his son has put off the divorce for the sake of the party, seeing nobody else knows about the embarrassing bit in his wife’s papers yet.

  So there is going to be a big, jolly, German family party tomorrow. Except that old Herr Küppers, aged seventy, won’t be there. Seeing people change entirely every seven years, he’s decided to make a quiet, unobtrusive getaway today. His pension will get away with him. That’s the only thing his son and daughter-in-law love about him.

  He got to know Algin this evening, because Algin was very drunk and wanted to confide in someone. He was going to do away with himself, and before that he was going to do away with someone else. This was the notion he’d taken into his head. I really don’t wonder at it any more when I see people being crazy and unhappy. I only wonder at it if I see them acting like normal people.

  Well, Algin wanted to kill someone worse than himself, or more stupid or generally inferior. He says he went looking for this person, but couldn’t find him. If you’ve made up your mind to die you are very powerful, and Algin spent hours drunk on this sense of power, also drunk with wine on an empty stomach.

  So Algin wandered around all through the daylight hours, but he couldn’t find anyone to kill. He couldn’t find anyone doing something bad, disgusting, ridiculous or hurtful which he would have been incapable of doing himself.

  Then Algin wandered into Bogener’s wineshop, where there were no other customers except old Herr Küppers. Algin got to know him by telling him he had the power to kill him—but not the desire or the strength or the right. And in this way the two of them made friends, which doesn’t surprise me. These days, it means quite a lot if a desperate man, ready for anything, refrains from killing someone else.

  “Got to throw my ballast overboard,” says Algin now. He has probably said this about a hundred times in the last hour. “Got to throw my ballast overboard.” He doesn’t want any apartment any more, doesn’t want any furniture, any position, any riches, any recognition or any wife. Because the apartment and furniture eat away at his strength, position and recognition eat away at self-respect, and his wife’s chilly lovelessness eats away at the warmth of his heart and at his talent.

  So Algin is planning to go away with old Herr Küppers, walk off into the Taunus, along the Mosel, going he doesn’t mind where. The world is beautiful anywhere. He hopes, even in Germany, he can earn enough as a writer and poet to sleep at an inn, eat bread and drink a glass of wine in the evening, without prostituting himself too much. “For a poet who writes to human orders when his orders come from God is a prostitute.” I wish Algin wouldn’t shout so. People in the bar are looking.

  Algin goes home with me, except it isn’t his home any more, he’s given it up. Old Herr Küppers goes off too, to fetch his toothbrush and soap and a spare shirt. He will come to meet Algin at midnight, and the pair of them will go away and be happy and have their self-respect.

  I am not supposed to tell Liska any of this. Why not, I wonder? It really may be a good thing if Algin goes off with the old man. Algin is looking old and wrinkled as a newborn baby, while the old man looks smooth and young.

  Algin says Liska can have all the furniture, and the rent for the apartment is paid six months in advance. Yes, and what’s Liska going to live on? What’s Betty Raff going to live on? What am I going to live on?

  Lore, Lore, Lore, oh, aren’t the girls pretty at seventeen or …

  Singing and laughter spill out of the windows. A festive, gleaming strip of light falls from one open window, falling to the paved street below, dim and yearning.

  I open the door. Algin melts into the party inside. I’m about to close the door again when a post or something comes away from the side of the building. Am I dreaming that the world is falling down?

  Franz? Is it really you?

  “I want to talk to you, Sanna,” says Franz.

  “Yes, Franz. Wait for me, Franz, I’ll be back in just a minute.” I sit down for a moment in the hall which is now a little taproom.

  “How happy the German people are these days,” says the old Englishman, the one who is all pink and glowing, and he adds, “I’m afraid our train will soon be leaving, we’ll have to go soon, what a shame.” He goes to look for the two younger Englishmen. They too are very pleased with themselves and the new-style German nation.

  “How much better than when we had the Communists around,” says old Herr Aaron, pleased and smiling.

  “I like to see the whole nefarious gang gathered together,” says Heini, politely removing his arm from Liska’s clutching hand.

  “What do you mean, nefarious gang?” says old Aaron.

  “I mean this party is a gathering of jailbirds,” says Heini. “Good honest citizens every one. Still, you know, according to the new German laws or National Socialist feeling or whatever, they ought all to be under lock and key. Pure chance if they’re still running around here free. Or sitting around here free.”

  “Wait a moment, Sanna, where are you going?” I’m going to Fra
nz, that’s where. He made me a sign to keep quiet, not to say he was here. What’s the matter? There’s a great lump of fear in my throat. No one is to know he’s around. Why not? What’s happened? He wouldn’t come in with me, either.

  Why is Heini holding me back? I want to get out of here. Liska has her arm around me, she is caressing me, her face against mine, her lips are full and tender, pressing into my hair—but her soft, emotional tenderness isn’t meant for me, it’s for Heini. My feet are cold and stiff with agitation and worry. My eyes see all these people moving about, my ears hear what they are saying, my heart is waiting for the moment when I can slip away without being noticed.

  You can see the Englishmen dancing in the confused, disorderly twilight of the sitting room now, dancing in a businesslike, tireless way like robots, among the blurred restlessness of the other guests. The paper streamers quiver in the hovering, curly clouds of cigarette smoke, the scent of roses fills all the rooms, hotter and thicker than before. If you close your eyes the scent seems red and fleshy, a physical presence—you could put out your hands and touch it.

  Voices and laughter sound like the sea, a soft, rushing, excited sound. I scarcely have the strength left to raise my eyelids from my eyes.

  I am dreaming this party, I am dreaming the dancing Englishmen, I am dreaming Mimi Baerwald’s gurgle of laughter and the wail and the howl of songs on the gramophone—Raindrops, raindrops, on the window pane …

  I’m dreaming Betty Raff’s shrill giggle, and the loud toasts being drunk by Algin, who is still alive. I’m dreaming Liska’s soft, damp mouth at my temples. I’m dreaming the precise and doll-like mincing steps of old Judge Gleit.