Gilgi (12 page)

The calm sleep beside each other, no longer permeated by anxiety and agitation, will make the thin, chance thread which connects them stronger and more robust. She switches the light on, looks at the alarm clock: no, she doesn’t need to get up for another half-hour. — — — It’s pleasant to lie so quietly beside each other. You don’t divide yourselves with thinking and speaking, you unite yourselves by breathing. You come very close to each other, belong very firmly together in this slumbering, soft-breathing quietness. His face is right next to her shoulder, his chin is already quite rough again. She puts her hand on his chest and observes its slight rise and fall with deep satisfaction. Cautiously, she feels around on his thigh: there’s the scar from the crocodile that bit him. There’s a kind of exaltation in lying beside a man who was bitten by a crocodile in Colombia. What if it had eaten him all up? Horrible. Really you have to be grateful to the crocodile for its restraint. Oh, it’s so good that he’s alive. And belongs to
me. A real live human being belongs to me. Tuck—tuck—tuck, you can feel his pulse beating at his temples and in his throat—a living human being belongs to me. I’ll keep him, I want to keep him …

Thump—thump—thump—what’s that? “Martin!”—she tugs at his shoulder—“Martin! Someone’s knocking, Martin!”—“Come in!” Martin calls, like someone who under all circumstances will regard knocking as a problem that is entirely solved by calling “Come in!” The door opens: a comfortable-looking female individual appears with a tray: “Made the coffee like ya always …” The individual notices Gilgi. Each looks at the other with mild surprise. Martin decides to be half-awake: “Don’t drop the tray, Frau Boss—and—if you would be so kind—an extra cup for the lady!”

“Morning, my little Gilgi. What was that? Who’s the woman? She comes every other day to clean, and then for reasons best known to herself she can’t be dissuaded from waking me at the crack of dawn with coffee. What? She saw you? So why shouldn’t the good woman see you? As long as it’s not her husband that you’re in bed—”

Frau Boss is standing in the kitchen, turning a light, fragile little cup between her honest, work-reddened fingers and meditating on her decision: to be offended or tolerant. “It’s only human,” she says aloud, interrupting her meditations. She enjoys pronouncing the “hu”—you have to breathe out so vigorously—“it’s only human.” The repetition acknowledges her allegiance not only to the respiratory charm, but also to the meaning of the sentence. There’s no need to get het up, it’s only human. Which is an example of how the ethical sense is influenced by a preference for aspirates.

“You seem so changed, Kron,” little Behrend says at the office. Has she already noticed too? Gilgi makes the typewriter keys dance. I suppose it’s nothing new if a woman is changed simply by love. The only bad thing is that one half of you has changed, while the other hasn’t, and now you consist of two halves which don’t fit together at any point, which are always struggling with each other, and neither wants to retreat even a hairsbreadth. Everything’s fine, you thought, when you moved in with Martin. Nothing’s fine. Maybe you want too much. You want to keep your whole life from before, with its joy in getting ahead, its well-oiled approach to work, with its strict allocation of time, its brilliantly functioning system. And you want another life on top of that, a life with Martin, a soft, contourless, heedless life. You don’t want to give up the first life, and you can’t give up the second one. Tick—tick—tick—and now you have to erase yet again, and that’ll make one of those ugly marks on the carbon. Yes, and there you were thinking what a wonderfully competent girl you were, and now you don’t think yourself worth the price of a typewriter ribbon. And who knows if Martin won’t decide tomorrow or the day after that a girl like Olga is much better suited to him. And you can’t collect your thoughts properly for work anymore. Can’t help thinking, what’s he doing now, what’ll he do next, I won’t see him until nine tonight—it’s hours yet till then. But I should go to Mittelstrasse again today and do some of my own work. And when the time comes, I won’t go after all.—And this morning he said goodbye to me so casually and last night … I’m supposed to ask Meier & Schröder’s salesman to call—as if that mattered— … and we have the honor to ask you …

Herr Reuter is pale and anxious and now completely
uninterested in pretty girls. “You should have written that on a business postcard, Fräulein—then the postage would be less—we have to economize.”

Economize! Fat Müller, who has a carefully cultivated nose for trouble, tells them about three checks which have bounced. “And Grossmann has gone bust, we’ll lose money there, too, and one bankruptcy prompts the next.” She picks up her sandwich gloomily, and you have the impression that she’s not eating it, but interring it in her mouth, though with a certain gusto.

“Fräulein Kron, have you heard that Höhne has been given notice?” the quiet Wendt asks during the lunch-break. Höhne is the head bookkeeper. “Yes, it’s because he has such a high salary, and Kaiser only gets a hundred-eighty and can easily do Höhne’s work as well as his own.”

“Höhne has three children, doesn’t he?”

“The boss is sorry, too—but what can he do!” And they’re all terribly considerate to Herr Höhne. Whenever they talk to him, they use a very gentle, lowered voice, as though to a sick man who isn’t supposed to find out that his case is hopeless, but who must inevitably work it out from the obtrusively tender care which people take of him. Gilgi could never stand Herr Höhne, because he’s one of those silly slogan-men: it was better in the old days—under the Kaiser—the new era—the curse of modernization. Now she feels sorry for him. If the firm gets rid of him, who knows where he can get a job again.

When Gilgi leaves the office in the afternoon, Täschler is waiting to receive her. She’s just what I needed. This is the second time she’s been on guard outside the office, she’s sniffed out where Gilgi works. She’s the complete detective, sprung from the pages of an Edgar Wallace novel.
With her head weighed down by a startling hat, she trips along beside Gilgi. “Ya got anywhere?”

“No.”

“Ya got any money yet?”

“No.”

“I jus’ don’ know how I can go on,” Täschler says. She’s not whining in the least, she’s talking quite calmly and objectively, and she’s even smiling. A thin, crooked smile. And her hands look like wilted cabbage-leaves, and she walks like a dead woman. And if she cried and whined, it would make no impression at all. You can’t stand that—other people’s tears—or your own, either.—If only she’d cry. But no more than—I jus’ don’ know how I can go on. That sounds so convincing, and whether it’s her own fault or someone else’s—it remains the fact. How should you answer? There’s no advice you can offer and no help you can give. You’re quite powerless. There must be lots of people who don’t know how they can go on, lots of people who are having a bad time. Collective misery—you’ve always closed your eyes to it. If you encounter an individual case, it pushes in behind your closed lids. It means something to you. Why? Yes, why! Because you’re not made of stone.

“A three-mark coin is all I have on me!” You’re ashamed and feel ridiculous—which is a big help! She doesn’t even want to take it. “Oh, not from you—I mean, ya have to earn it yourself. But why don’ ya go to your mother?” She’s built herself a kind of tenement in the air and can’t be coaxed out of it. “Go on, take it—here you are—my streetcar!” And Gilgi tries to press the coin into Täschler’s hand—it falls to the ground—Gilgi jumps onto the departing streetcar; the conductor yells at her—let him yell as much as he likes. She sees the old woman kneeling
on the busy street—crawling, searching the ground with groping hands and short-sighted eyes. She’s scrabbling there among the pedestrians, her hat has slipped to the side … close your eyes, tight, tight, don’t give in, don’t give in, anyone who hits rock bottom has almost no chance of getting back up again, you don’t have any damn time to waste now on slacking off and going soft — — —

“I can stay for an hour, Martin—I’m not going to my room today, I …”

“Don’t you want to tell me where this mysterious room of yours is?”

“No, Martin. I must—it’s—to do with my independence. I must have a place to work, I can’t do it here where you’re always around, and if I was in my room, I wouldn’t have a moment’s peace if I had to think that you could suddenly appear.”

“Idée fixe.”

“Well, let me have one.”

“Gilgi,” Martin says on Sunday morning, “you shouldn’t go to the office anymore, the bed always gets so cold and uncomfortable for me when you get up so early.” Gilgi shakes her head, so astonished that she can’t think of an answer. What answer could anyone think of? Yes, that’s a reason to give up your job in times like these, just to protect his right side from a draft. He’s one-of-a-kind, this Martin! “Look, little Gilgi, the money I have isn’t enough for one, which means that it won’t be enough for two, either, what do you think—shouldn’t we live together on my money?”

“What an idea, Martin!” Gilgi smiles with motherly superiority.

“Well, at least you shouldn’t go to old man Mahrenholz anymore!”

“I’ll be finished with him in three days anyway. Seriously, Martin—I really must earn money. You know, next year I’ll have saved enough to go to Paris and to Spain. Martin, we’ll go together, I don’t see things properly if you’re not there, you’re my better eye. Olga says you can live terribly cheaply on Majorca, and in Paris we’ll live in the
Quartier latin
—if we’ve saved carefully—you, too, Martin, you can put aside a set sum every month. I’ll make some changes in this household here.”

And Gilgi becomes energetic. Starts by giving Frau Boss her notice. She can do the little bit of washing-up and sweeping-out herself. Now she’ll show Martin just how competent and productive she is. So much competence and productivity make him uneasy.

“Are these all of your shirts, Martin? Can’t be worn anymore. What? I’ll make new ones for you. I know how. What was that? Well, there’s a sewing machine at the back of the store-room, I’ve been itching to use it for ages. What did you say? It doesn’t matter how you look? It surely does. Never mind those old Greeks now, Martin, we’re going out to buy material.”

“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.