Gilgi (13 page)

“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 stockings—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 …”

“Yes, yes, what?”—

“It’s Wendt, Kron—I was in Accounts, I heard everything they were saying in the next room—Wendt was in with the boss. Was supposed to get her notice—so she cried and said that her mother was sick and that—you—you didn’t have to support anyone, and you were well-off—and it’s all lies, Kron—I saw her with her mother—the day before yesterday, the old girl buzzes around like a bee and is as fit as a fiddle.—And now Reuter wants to give you notice instead of Wendt …”

Thank God, thank God—now it’s not my fault, I can’t be blamed.—Thank God, I don’t have to come here anymore, no-one will look at me anymore—I can’t stand it anymore when people look me in the face. And if I am getting my notice—then why wait till next month, why not let me go straightaway?

And that evening Gilgi is sitting on the side of the bed—completely naked—except that she’s festooned
herself with all her colorful necklaces, red ones, green ones, blue ones, white ones—made of glass, wood, and mother-of-pearl.—“Martin, I can give you some good news, I’m not going to the office anymore—I’ve got my notice. Sad? Why should I be? Can’t you see how happy I am, quite ordinarily happy? — — — Hey, Martin, do you know how I feel? Like someone who’s sitting in a restaurant and eating and drinking and who knows that he doesn’t have enough money to pay—so that he doesn’t give a damn—just orders more and more—champagne and oysters and caviar—if you’re going to stiff them on the bill, then do it properly, and not just for a small lager and a dry bread roll.”

And if relentless activity, if a powerful will to live is diverted from its course, then it turns towards its mirror image—not to passivity—but to a kind of rage for self-destruction. Nothing matters now, tomorrow and debts and confusion—nothing matters — —

“Gilgi, my little Maori girl …” A thousand words of love, a thousand silly words, you’re submerged in them, you’re lying under a mantle of words, probably you’re making a final feeble effort to find them ridiculous, formulating a cheeky, trivial little remark which promptly loses its way between the brain and the lips.

Warm, blue-sky days follow. They go out walking—“no, Martin, really—I think it’s boring to run around so aimlessly, I love walking long distances, but I must be going somewhere.”

“We are going somewhere.”

“I seeee—so, where is it that we’re going?”

“Well, we’re sure to end up someplace.”

“Yes, but I’ve got to know that when I set off.”

“Martin, I don’t know—don’t walk so fast, Martin—I mean, you can’t possibly think that these ugly, gray, rotting allotments are beautiful!—It’s creepy here. Makes me think of sex-murderers.”

“Well, that shows they’re interesting.”

“Martin, in summer—in summer we’ll go swimming together in the Rhine—and we’ll watch the bicycle races at the stadium. That’s lovely, Martin: the guys in their colorful jerseys strewn all over the grass. And the marvelously exciting noise of the rushing wheels—ssssssst—as they flash around the curves—crash-bang, someone’s down—you feel like you’ve fallen down with him. And everything is boiling and itching and glowing with excitement and tension—and a wide peaceful sky above it all, and the air is warm and trembling, and in the dark the arc lights look like stars which have fallen from the sky …” “Oh, my little Gilgi is turning poetical!”—“It’s only a reflex, Martin.”

It’s fun to mooch around in Cologne’s Old Town. Winding little alley-ways and uneven cobblestones—hot chestnuts, ten for ten pfennigs!—You fill your overcoat pockets with them and warm your fingertips on them.—Odd little cafés … “No, Martin, come on—we can’t eat here—those cold cutlets must have been in the window for at least six months—if you go in there and order some, the waiter will take them out and dust them off and …”

“You can imagine such unpleasant things, little Gilgi!”

Houses twisted by age, tiny shops with windows no bigger than pillows, crammed with old clothes and suits, blocks of chocolate as old as the Bulgarian farmer in those yogurt advertisements, clocks which have taken a sacred
oath never to go again, guitars, children’s trumpets … “Himioben” is the name over one of the doors. “Himioben,” Martin says, enraptured.—“Himioben—such a wonderful name. Gilgi, I could never be completely angry with a city where someone has that name.” And has a vision of an amazingly beautiful, mysterious Jewish girl with shining black hair and soft round eyes and entrancing lashes—invents a fantastic story on the spot, he can do things you wouldn’t expect, this Martin—you’re standing in the shabbiest district of Cologne, outside a crooked little house which looks like it would blow over in the first puff of wind, and you feel like you’re stuck between two pages of the Old Testament—some vague idea: serving seven years—something about cornfields and gleaning and—whither thou goest, I will go …

“Well, let’s go in and take a look at the beautiful Jewish girl,” Gilgi suggests, because now she’s quite curious. And it turned out to be a puny little red-headed guy who shot up like a jack-in-the-box behind all the junk on his shop counter—nothing like a beautiful Jewish girl. And Martin bought a pair of suspenders—mauve with grass-green spots, and Gilgi thinks that even seventy-five pfennigs is too much to pay for a shattered illusion.—“But the name is still beautiful, and the idea too—but I won’t wear the suspenders—”

The final disappointment!—Gilgi throws the little package into the Rhine at the Hohenzollern Bridge—“so it can float into the North Sea and be eaten by a flounder.—You know, Martin, I could probably forgive my husband if he punched me on the nose sometime—but if he ever turned up wearing suspenders, I’d leave him.”

“Wives who make such elevated aesthetic demands of
their husbands demonstrate a very lax morality.—Please don’t fall into the Rhine, Gilgi—it’ll be too cold for me to jump in after you until the end of April.”

And they look at paintings, listen to concerts. Wearing a long black lace dress, Gilgi sits in Gürzenich Hall. Tries to adopt a stylishly attentive expression, but turns her eyes again and again to Martin’s hard, angular profile. Hears sounds which bore her, and feels a strong desire to give Martin a kiss. Hears sounds which she likes and feels an even stronger desire to kiss Martin. And just can’t stand the fact that at the moment he’s occupied with something other than her, must at least touch his hair briefly. Wants him to laugh about something with her, to explain to her quickly why so many people have such silly expressions and closed eyes when they’re listening to music—and there’s a fat man sitting beside them who’s breathing so loudly in time with the music that he almost sounds like he’s snoring … “Pssssst!” go the people in the row behind. Like angry cobras! “Please, Martin, just tell me quickly if it’s cobras that hiss like that—schschsch … like a garden hose when someone pushes the air out of it …”