Gilgi (7 page)

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 how 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 …”

“So it’s a poor life after all,” Olga says, shaking her head.

“But, Olga, it’s so beautiful to have your life laid out in front of you like a neatly solved arithmetical problem!”

“It’s awful.” Olga is becoming heated. “I look forward
from one unforeseen thing to the next, I look forward to people that I haven’t even met yet. I long to be alone, and then I long again for someone that I can really care about. You’re so miserly with yourself, you heartless, egotistical little person—you don’t care about anyone—but I still like you. Do you want my fur coat, Gilgi? How egotistical and cold you are, not wanting to let me give you anything. Do you want my coat, Gilgi?”

Gilgi has to laugh. “Pay the coat off first, Olga—what an irresponsible girl you are! Anyway, you shouldn’t be talking to me when you’re hungover like this.”

“Yes, Gilgi, but you have to come to Maj … Majorca—that reminds me! I’ll have to get ready in flash—got a date at seven.” Olga rushes to her wardrobe. “You can come with me, Gilgi. What? Well—I met Martin Bruck in Palma two years ago. You don’t know him? No, he’s not particularly famous. Wrote two books, quite good ones. We laughed together so much that we didn’t have time to fall in love with each other. Anyway, the day before yesterday I ran into him unexpectedly in Komödienstrasse. He didn’t say: ‘Small world!’ and as a reward I promised to meet him tonight. Come with me, we’ll have a good time.”

“I’d just be in the way.”

“Don’t be silly.” Olga puts her hat on. “Don’t you see that I’m wearing my black dress? If I’m going to a rendezvous with immoral intentions, I appear in pink or sky-blue.”

Gilgi nods, Olga’s black dress is incontrovertible proof. “I was going to do some work, Olga.”

“Oh, come along, he’s a nice guy, is Martin Bruck.”

“All right, but for an hour at most.”

He’s already waiting for them outside the “Schwerthof.” Nothing special, Gilgi decides, looks quite amusing, oh well.

“You don’t exactly seem to be aiming at the elegance of Adolphe Menjou, Martin!”—“Not exactly, Olga!”—He laughs, slaps a battered little hat onto his thick dark hair, tries unsuccessfully to smooth out his crumpled overcoat, looks at his reflection in a shop window. “Don’t look at yourself for too long, Martin, it might depress you!” Olga pushes her hand under his arm. “You’d do better to look at my unusually cute little friend—and don’t pull a face as though you’d been tied to ten martyrs’ stakes at once! How old are you now? Forty-three? Well, of course, at that age a man is as dependent on flattery as an ageing beauty queen. But I’ll console you by saying that despite your ridiculous clothes you manage to look—if not elegantly dressed—then at least elegantly proportioned.”

Olga leads the way to a little
Konditorei
in Aachenstrasse: “Not in the mood for a café-with-orchestra today. If I hear the Song of the Pigeon one more time, I’ll go nuts.” Martin is happy with that. He really likes this kind of touching little
Konditorei
with its sagging plush sofas and the poor, bare little marble-topped tables.

One—two—three hours go by. Gilgi, who only wanted to stay for an hour at most, is still sitting there. What’s keeping her here? Her arms are lying on the cold marble top of the little table as though they’re frozen in place. She knows so many men, but this Martin Bruck is different, completely different. Why does she like him? Yes, why? As if it were so easy to give yourself the right answer to that. He’s not handsome, not big and strong, not elegant. He’s dressed as carelessly and indifferently as someone who’s
finally accepted that he can’t run around naked. He has such thoughtful hands, thin, frail fingers. His face is narrow and fleshless, his forehead is high and angular, his hair needs trimming at the back. A sharp nose, a soft, sensitive mouth, regular teeth shining with health, each one seeming to join in when Martin Bruck laughs, and dark, lively eyes, their expression constantly changing, and their gaze constantly roaming. He’s of medium height, narrow in the shoulders and hips. His posture and gestures are sure and unconstrained. Nothing special, it’s a mystery why I’m looking at him so closely.

It occurs to Olga that Gilgi has powdered her nose four times in two hours, it occurs to Gilgi herself that she wishes Olga wasn’t sitting directly under the lamp, the light makes her hair glow even more than it already does. Tonight, at least, Olga shouldn’t look quite so pretty.

Martin is funny and entertaining, pleased to be sitting here with a couple of pretty girls. And he has stories to tell! He’s traveled even further than Olga has. Gilgi is amazed. “Yes, but home—where do you call home?”

Yes, this Martin Bruck doesn’t call anywhere home—this vagabond, this idler, this man with empty pockets. He’s always been a vagabond and an idler, his pockets have only been empty for a few weeks. Life was fun while they were full. He’d drifted around every continent, spent money on every continent. Everywhere was beautiful, everywhere had something new to offer, life everywhere was full of surprises. He’d only make himself unhappy for the sake of a change—so that he could be twice as happy again afterwards. In Stanleyville on the Congo he suffered a slight case of malaria, in Colombia a crocodile looking for change of diet chewed on his upper left thigh—both
accidents which had no serious after-effects, and didn’t cloud his enjoyment of life for a moment. For four years he led something approaching the life of a normal citizen. He wrote two books, which were a success in literary circles. They didn’t earn him any money. But earning money wasn’t the point. Instead of building a literary career, Martin decided that he’d worked enough. He wasn’t ambitious. There would always be lots of other people who wrote much better books than he did. All right, then! It occurred to him that there were still countless countries, islands, rivers, and cities in the world which he hadn’t seen yet. The restless wandering began anew. Everywhere he found friends, people who liked him, women and girls who were made happy by his first kiss and sad by his last. So for another ten years he lived entirely as he pleased—then he ran out of breath. He put the remainder of his capital into his brother’s factory, and now he gets a monthly payment of two hundred marks. That means that he won’t starve. He’s never been a snob, he can do without luxury and elegance, he’s used to hardships—what can go wrong? So now he’ll wander around Europe for a change. Must still be enough interesting things here which don’t cost much. Maybe he’ll work again too. It’s possible. Not probable.

Now he’s in Cologne. A friend is letting him use his apartment while he’s away in Russia for two years. Martin has set up house: he’s hung a crumpled overcoat and two dusty suits in the elegant built-in wardrobe, and set up three huge crates of books in the library, where their rough light-colored wood is clashing discordantly with the prevailing notes of dark oak.—

Gilgi’s imagination was always a well-behaved child: it was allowed to play in the street, but not to go beyond the
corner. Now the well-behaved child is venturing a little further for once. Martin talks, and Gilgi sees: oceans, deserts, countries—but that’s not the essence of what she’s seeing, she’d like to make an accounting to herself—as she always does—to record her feelings in her own words. Oh, my little, gray words! That someone can speak so colorfully! She’s sitting on a sphere that’s damp with rain—there’s a sun far, far away in the sky—with each hand you grab a sunbeam, wrap them around your wrists, quite tightly, let yourself be drawn upwards—how heavy you are! The sunbeams could tear—you’re getting closer and closer to the sun’s hot orange-red ball—it’s getting warmer and warmer … And somehow Martin Bruck’s fingers brush Gilgi’s hand, quite by chance—and even more by chance Gilgi’s hand moves past the cups and the little milk-jugs, and now it’s lying right there … lying well within reach of—after all, your hand has to be lying somewhere. And Olga’s eyes are shrouded in memory, she’s thinking of Franzi—Gilgi likes Olga very much, she doesn’t know Franzi, but she’s pleased that he exists.

You have to show your relatives the city. Frau Kron has so little time. On the next day, Gilgi is picked up at the office by Aunt Hetty and the two silly cows. They inspect the Ringstrasse. “But the Jungfernstieg in Hamburg is nicer.” Church of the Apostles, Hohestrasse, Wallraf-Richartz Museum. That doesn’t interest them in the least, but if you come back from a visit to a strange town, you want to be able to say: we went to the museum.

Gilgi parts from these three delightful people at eight o’clock.

Kaiser Wilhelm Crescent. Greif. Magdalene Greif, née Kreil. Once more, Gilgi climbs a staircase. There’s no bad smell here. Behind the doors, it’s quiet. No yelling, no cursing, no stinking, twice-breathed air paralyzing your chest. Shameless, arrogant banisters—No Access For Messengers and Deliverymen!—a building for the upper crust. Sticky fried potatoes—lady without internal organs. For a few seconds, I believed that Täschler was my mother. Because I believed it, she was it, whether for a few seconds, two, three, four—days—weeks—doesn’t matter a damn. Magdalene Greif, née Kreil. High-class building—disgustingly high-class building. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong in Thieboldstrasse, either, but the stinking room there—that had something to do with me. Why? Dear God in heaven—Olga, Pit, mother—help me, I don’t want to think. So you wrap two sunbeams around your wrists—You, the one with the cheeky strong teeth, with the lively hands, the upright, unbowed neck—God, dear, dear, dear God, I’ve already been standing here for ten minutes in front of this ridiculous stained-glass window, I know that I’m standing here, I’m not crazy! There’s something wrong with me—wrong with me—wrong with me. You think in hit songs, feel with their rhythms, submerge yourself in them—tam-tam-tam-ta—those songs: help you run away and towards.