Gilgi

by Irmgard Keun

  “You’re so terribly impractical! Martin! Yes, are you nuts? Because we don’t buy material in such an expensive shop—Henry Ford might, but I wouldn’t bet on it—we go to one of those little places on an upper floor, Martin, where everything only costs half as much. You have to take into account the fact that the people are paying high rents on the shop and all kinds of other … What? Boring? It’s not at all boring, it’s interesting, and useful to know.

  “Would you like stripes, Martin? I think plain colors are more elegant. Fräulein, this material won’t shrink in the wash, will it? What did you say, Martin? You’re happy with anything? We’ll take shantung silk—because summer’s coming soon, then you won’t need a jacket when …

  “Martin, you’ve just got to have a new overcoat.”

  “What can you possibly have against my good old overcoat, that’s served me so long and so faithfully? If you knew all the things we’ve been through together …”

  “That’s just it, it’s so obvious what the coat has been through.”

  “Doesn’t matter, I don’t want a new coat. Am I a gigolo?”

  “You must learn to keep track, Martin, you must get into the habit of writing down your income and expenditures,” Gilgi commands, purchases a little notebook, equips it with a little cord, and hangs it next to Martin’s desk. Martin can never see it without shuddering inwardly. He goes on strike. “I don’t have any income, and writing down just expenditures—that’s no fun.” Gilgi is frustrated to find that, despite all her efforts, she fails to establish a system for their joint financial affairs. It’s incomprehensible to her that someone can create such a muddle just by existing. But Martin can. Without getting worried in the least. He’s always spending money—on nothing. Only needs to walk around Ringstrasse in his horrible old overcoat for ten minutes and bingo!—his pocket is ten marks lighter. Heaven knows how he does it.

  And he runs up debts too! The first time Gilgi comes across a few of his bills, she feels like crying. She goes secretly to the tobacconist’s on the corner and pays the outstanding amount. Martin has found out by that night. It’s their first fight. Martin rages, until Gilgi sits cowering in the corner of the club chair, all tiny and intimidated.

  “What I do with my money is no business of yours—understood? What a tactless little thing you are. How much did you pay? What? Here it is. Who invited you to take care of my debts? Who gave you the right?” Gilgi crawls further and further back into the corner of the chair. She’s desperately unhappy, but she’s pleased that he’s so angry. She loves him a thousand times more now, assuming that such a thing is actually possible.

  “Well, don’t cry.” Martin comes closer, already appeased. He’s surprised to find himself taking this funny, silly little thing so seriously. He lifts her onto the windowsill, he enjoys moving her around like a doll. She pulls a thick curtain of hair across her face:

  “Don’t look at me, Martin, I look so ugly when I’ve been crying.—Yes—give me the face-powder that’s on the table—and the mirror.” Well, if he’s not supposed to look at her face, then he’ll look at her legs. The slight, gentle curve of her calves is so beautiful, so perfect, and her knees are so finely chiseled, that you can admire them without feeling aroused. Martin admires these beautiful live artworks so thoroughly, and describes his admiration in such a silly, childish way, that Gilgi becomes jealous of her own legs. After all, they’re not separate beings of some kind, they’re part of her, and he’s talking as though that’s not so. “I wish you loved me, Martin—do you understand—me!” But of course he doesn’t understand, and she can’t explain it.

  And Gilgi is drifting in the river of superfluous feelings. Superfluous? They were once, they seemed to be once. Isn’t she happy? Of course she is. Often. But the hours of happiness come at a high price. The bill is presented promptly. Pay it! With what? With fear and twinges of pain. No, I don’t think the price is too high, I just find the currency strange. Fear—pain! To whom should I pay them? Who profits from this odd currency? Gilgi feels the impersonal element in Martin’s love. There’s no doubt—he loves her, even takes her seriously—in his own way. But something’s missing, the commonality of their inner and outer lives is missing. Gilgi thinks long and deeply—a difficult and unfamiliar job.

  At night she lies awake for hours, with Martin close beside her. Her bare arm lies diagonally across his chest. Nevertheless, Martin is far away. You know so little about him. All attempts to co-ordinate him with her life somehow have failed so miserably. You should try it the other way around—to adapt yourself to him. Commonality is what counts. Our connection is so loose, so insubstantial. He might decide tomorrow that he’s had enough of Cologne. What did he say yesterday: “We should go away from here—to Bergamo or to Scotland, I’ve got friends there, they’d be happy to have me, and if I bring you along they’ll be twice as happy.” Yes, and after that? He doesn’t think about it. But it’s completely impossible for her to abandon everything here. Impossible to be dependent on the hospitality of people that she’s never met. To be dependent on Martin! On his money. When he doesn’t have enough for himself. He has absolutely no idea how impractical he is, and he’ll never change …

  And if you lie awake at night, you’re tired during the day, and if you’re tired—no, she’s not doing her job badly. “Once a man appears, a woman becomes useless at work,” Herr Höhne, the bookkeeper who’d got his notice, had always said. She’ll prove him wrong, she’ll prove everyone who says that stuff wrong. Gilgi is two and three times as conscientious as before. Only—what used to be a pleasure is now a major effort, she’s cramping up, if you like, but after all that’s her business alone. The letters which she gives Herr Reuter to sign are cleanly and correctly typed, no cause for complaint there. The fact that she’s given up her classes at the Berlitz School, that she hasn’t been to her room for weeks—don’t think about that, put that right out of your mind. You need the little bit of the afternoon that’s left to be together with Martin. You go for walks with him, read books with him, try doggedly to agree that everything he finds beautiful is beautiful. Make quite inhuman efforts to find that things which left you cold before are beautiful, grit your teeth and try to force yourself. And has it worked? Not so far.

  “Oh, Martin, now you’ve spent all your money again!”

  “Well, what if I have?” He shrugs his shoulders, and you can tell that he doesn’t want to talk about it, simply doesn’t want to admit that he’ll start getting into debt again—what’s he going to pay with, he’s getting in over his head. But you still worry, because you belong to him. This mess, this confusion, it’ll have to make him uncomfortable one day, and when he’s uncomfortable …

  And Martin himself is surprised that he doesn’t feel even more uncomfortable. He’s never heard the repulsive word “money” as often in his life as he hears it from this little girl. She’s a well-meaning and pretty little thing. And if he didn’t like her so much, he wouldn’t stay here another hour. Seems almost to think that he’s a con-man, the little one. He’ll pay his debts all right—sooner or later. After all, he won’t need much—later—when he’s by himself again. But to economize while living with a pretty woman! Hell—he feels sick at the very idea. It’s not the kind of thing he’s used to. And he’d be much, much more in love with the little one if he could give her nice clothes and diamonds and soft furs … that’s just the way it is: the more brilliant and impressive a role you can play for someone, the more you love them. And his thoughts are a closed book to Gilgi, who wishes: if you could just talk sensibly with him—about money, about economizing, about practical things. You’d like to see your future stretching before you like a smooth, clear road—a stretch of a shared future—and you see nothing but a dark, messy thicket.

  “My poor little Gilgi, you look pale—I’ve got a marvelous old Burgundy, we’ll drink it tonight—you’ll get the roses back in your cheeks, and you’ll cheer up.—And one day I’ll just pack you in my suitcase and set off wit
h you.”

  “Martin,” Gilgi says, sitting down in his lap—“if you did some work!” She blushes dark red, is afraid he’ll be angry. He just laughs: “What kind of work should I do?” Well, if someone asks like that, what are you supposed to answer? “Anyway, I do work, little Gilgi.” Yes, he does. Thank God, he does. It happens once or twice a week that Martin suffers an acute attack of work-fever and writes from the evening into the small hours. Those are happy hours, when Gilgi lies awake at night and hears Martin’s pen scratching across the paper. Those are happy hours, when the place beside her in bed is empty—because Martin is “working.” She used to think that there was nothing more despicable than a man who doesn’t work. And Gilgi would rather identify all the most pathetic, miserable qualities in the world in herself than find the slightest defect in Martin. He’s succeeded in half-convincing her that not working doesn’t necessarily need to be contemptible, and that even if Martin is a—a—a non-worker, then this just proves that there are—non-workers who are wonderful people. This proof notwithstanding: she’s prouder and happier when Martin is working. And when Gilgi, during one of her brief meetings with Olga, says in passing: “he always works through the night,” then she believes it, because she wants to believe it.

  “Now then, now then—my little one—dissatisfied with me?” She grips his thick hair: “Martin, I feel sorry for the girls who fall in love with bald-headed men—can’t be much fun scrabbling around on a bare surface without finding anything—yes, Martin—what I mean is—I—whether you want to work—to work for money!”

  “You don’t have to come at me with such demoralizing suggestions, little Gilgi.—Lived a rich man, died a poor one!—Go and put your red dress on, put lipstick on—young, pretty women are made even prettier by make-up—old and ugly ones even uglier. One of life’s delightful injustices. Go on, little Gilgi, make yourself beautiful tonight.—I’m going out again—back in a half-hour.”—Where’s he going? Gilgi doesn’t need to ask. Martin has recently developed a complex about the Church of the Apostles: “I’ve rarely seen such purity of style!” At least three times each day, he goes out and looks at the Church of the Apostles. Dear, good Church of the Apostles, I don’t really know what’s so special about you, but if you just help a little to keep Martin in Cologne, then I’ll think that you’re one of the most beautiful things in the world.

  Gilgi puts on her coral-red dress. It falls in soft folds to her feet. Has a bright, cheerful color, radiant and festive. She fastens a belt of gold thread around her waist.—She made this dress before she ever met Martin. How pointless, how dead it would have remained if his eyes hadn’t brought it to life.—

  She stands in front of the mirror, powders her shoulders and the back of her neck, looks slim and frail and estranged. Removed from the everyday. Removed from reality. White face with dark eyes, very red mouth—I’m very pretty today—now—I’m allowed to say it, because I don’t belong to myself anymore. What I see in the mirror is what someone else has made out of me, I can’t take pride in it.—I shouldn’t look like this—so disconnected from the street, the dust, the workaday. I look differently from the way I think. She runs her fingers cautiously over the indistinct line of her hips. My body is estranged from me, it’s way ahead of me in knowledge, experience now …

  She lifts her hands—slowly—my hands have become unfaithful to me, once they were familiar to me—and now? Soft, tired skin, carefully filed fingernails, gleaming with rosy polish. Four tender, pampered lover’s fingers on each hand—plus the index fingers with their typewriter-hardened tips—ordinary, robust tools for work—you mustn’t put polish on them, too, you mustn’t do that to them. Eight smooth, elegant fingers, two coarse ones—you ugly ones with the blunt nails, you’re still my favorites among all my ten fingers.—

  “Martin, my two index fingers are all you’ve let me keep of myself.”

  “Drink, my little Gilgi.” Yes, yes, I want to drink. To break this resistance just once.—That’s a damned good head for alcohol you’ve got—another glass—and Martin tells his brilliant stories, has laughing teeth and young lively eyes, and really he is younger, a thousand years younger than me—and you’ve got to drink, maybe it’ll make you that young, too—and if he wrote down the stories he’s telling—then they’d make him money—and you know you shouldn’t tell him that, but you have to … and now: he’s never spoken like that before … “this cursed country—messes up everyone who lives here—money, money, money—always talking about money and earning money …” Oh, and you decide that you’re an inferior money-grubber, you’ll never say another word about money, you’ll let everything fall in a heap, it doesn’t matter what happens after that—it just doesn’t matter.

  “I’ll take you away from this ugly country, little Gilgi—soon—what is there to keep you here—? Only a hundred-fifty marks at the office?”—Oh, he’s so sick and tired of this gray rainy country, these miserable clockwork people—he wants to get away, and he wants to take this shining little girl with him—if she’s already so pretty here, just how pretty will she be somewhere else, freed from her eight-hour day, no more of that stupid, pointless business stuff in her head. He’ll simply take out everything that’s still his from his brother’s factory—they’ll be able to have a good time on that for a few years—and then? Well, who cares what—after all, his greatest skill has always been in expunging stupid, annoying What-Thens from his life.—“We’ll have a wonderful life—when we’re somewhere else you’ll belong to me more than you do here.”

  “But I do belong to you, Martin—I only wish I belonged—to—you. Yes, I’m drinking it.”

  Yes, that’s how he likes me—when I’m talking stupid stuff like that—God preserve me from remembering tomorrow morning all the things I’ve said tonight, I’d be mortified. “The least important parts about me are the parts you like the best,” and—and everything that means the most to me in the world is meaningless to him. He has no idea what matters to me. It’s about so much more than the hundred-fifty marks, it’s about—yes, if you could explain that, how you’re fighting for something, something which exists but which you can’t put a name to—.

  “You mustn’t say that, Martin—these hateful times—it’s so mean to complain about your own times!—My times! The only ones I can live in. The times before, the times after—don’t interest me at all. The times now are important to me, they belong to me—you shouldn’t moan about your own times, and it’s not enough to tolerate them—you have to stay loyal to them.

  “I do want to laugh, Martin, I am laughing—I’m very happy—very, very happy, you’ll stay with me—and I’ll—

  “Martin—go away from here, you say—with you! I—Martin—I belong here.—What happens here is my business—all of it. A sad country, you say? Martin, even at school I was ashamed when they sang ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles’—such a revolting song—so oily when you were saying the words, so oily when you were thinking them, your whole mouth full of cod-liver oil.—Those people—who force their love of the fatherland on you—do you understand that—: instead of being quite humble and grateful when they get the chance to love something—they’re proud of it as though they’d created it themselves—and they make what they’ve created into an obligation for other people. Such terrible nonsense.—It’s nothing to do with me—but I was born here, and the language, the air, the sounds—whatever else—it’s all familiar to me—the everyday things here, the practical things, the modest things, the gray paving stones—it’s all so important to me, and I love it all in my own way. Ugly country! Maybe. But a mother still loves her child even when it has terribly ugly bow legs—of course it would be idiotic and not proper love if then she said that the legs were straight and beautiful—she’d do better to go to the orthopedic specialist and …

  “Oh yes, Martin, I know I’m drunk … I’m so tired—I’ll …”

  “You’ll sleep.” He carries her to the bed, slips her dress off, takes her shoes off—her sto
ckings—oh, no other man in the world can be so soft and good and gentle … and don’t think about anything, don’t think about anything anymore—no inhibitions now, no resistance—let yourself fall, deep, deep, down into the unknown, where there’s no tomorrow—firm arms and smooth shoulders—Martin—I want to keep him …

  Since that night, something in Gilgi has been broken beyond repair.—Oh, liking someone is good—loving someone—is good too. But being in love, really being in love: an extremely painful condition. There should be a drug to cure it. How hollowed out you are emotionally, cut off from people and things, you’re not seeing any longer, not hearing any longer, everything is sinking—everything becomes profoundly unimportant. The effort to retain an interest in anything is painful and destructive. Olga, Pit, the Krons, Täschler—names without substance—without form—far away, inessential. Names which emerge and disappear in a matter of seconds.—You sit at the office—the memory of a word, a glance, flares up—reality sinks out of sight, you feel nothing but this painful physical longing in your lips and the palms of your hands. You go to your room—a thin layer of dust covers the little Erika-brand typewriter, and vaguely your index finger traces strange little wave-patterns and circles in the dust. You lie down on the divan—you think, think, think—but what you’re thinking aren’t thoughts anymore, they’re shapeless phantasms, images shrouded in red fog, ideas, events—from the past, from the future—stupid, silly, crazy—you get a revoltingly sweetish taste in your mouth—ach, why should you keep fighting—how, against what? Because you’re so tired …

  “Kron,” little Behrend says, “Kron, I have to tell you something …”