Gilgi (2 page)

“Both killed?” Frau Kron asks, almost hopefully. It’s not callousness. It’s just that she enjoys the shuddering sympathy which news of deaths and scandals provokes in her.

“Nah, jus’ the child,” Herr Kron reports. He speaks the true Cologne dialect, partly out of pride in his hometown, partly for the good of his business. Mother saved, child dead. Frau Kron’s shuddering sympathy drops by half, leaving her dissatisfied. She immerses herself in the advertising supplement, in search of consolation. Stock Clearance Sale. Uding’s Shoes—Our Display Windows Say It All. Bursch’s Carpets—Final Three Days—High-Quality Goods. Frau Kron reads. She’s stocky and shapeless. The skin on her arms and breasts is honorably slack and tired. She’s gray and unattractive and has no desire to be otherwise. She can afford to grow old. Her dark-blue woollen dress has a light-gray collar and cuffs, and there’s an ivory brooch at her throat—remnants of vanity. She sits on the
green plush sofa, reading the advertising supplement of the
Cologne Advertiser
, pressing her broad, fleshy thumb onto the bread crumbs on the table and absent-mindedly putting them into her mouth. Above her, Washington is flourishing his flag which is at least the size of a bedsheet.

With swift but deliberate, graceful movements Gilgi drinks a cup of coffee, eats a thinly spread bread roll—because you don’t want to get fat—lights a cigarette, draws on it three, four, five times, stubs it out on her saucer, and stands up.

“S’long, Father.”

“S’long, Jilgi.” Herr Kron looks up, wants to say something, to be friendly, to take an interest, he opens his mouth: he can’t think of anything. He closes his mouth and looks down again.

“S’long, Mother.” Gilgi brushes her hand over Frau Kron’s ham-like shoulder as she leaves the room.

“Jilgi,” she hears from behind her, “aren’t you comin’ to coffee this afternoon at the Geisslers’?” Frau Kron is Hamburg born and bred, but in the interests of marital harmony she copies her husband’s Rhineland dialect, with goodwill and poor results.

“No time,” Gilgi calls out, closing the front door behind her.

No, she has no time to lose, not a minute. She wants to get on, she has to work. Her day is crammed full with work of all kinds, with each job pressing up hard against the next. She rarely finds even a small pause in which to catch her breath. Work. A hard word. Gilgi loves it for its hardness. And when she’s not working for once, when she grants herself time for once to be pretty, to be young, to have fun—then it’s purely for fun, purely for pleasure.
Work has a point, and fun has a point. Accompanying her mother to a
Kaffeeklatsch
would be neither fun nor work, but a pointless waste of time, and completely incompatible with Gilgi’s character and her conscience.

Gilgi is sitting in the streetcar. Actually she wanted to walk, but she’s run out of time. Next to her, in front of her, the line-up of office workers. Tired faces, discouraged faces. Each one resembles the next. Their daily routines are the same, their emotions are the same, they look mass-produced. Any new passengers—anyone else without a ticket? None of them like doing what they do. None of them like being what they are. Little pale girl with the nice legs, wouldn’t you rather stay in bed and have a proper sleep? Suntanned girl with the hiking shoes, looks like it’ll be a nice day today—wouldn’t you rather take a long walk in the city forest and feed the tame deer with the chestnuts you collected in the fall?

Anyone else without a ticket—anyone else without a ticket? They’re riding to work. Day after day, to work. Each day resembles the next. Dingadingding—they get off, they get on. They ride the streetcar. Ride and ride. Eight-hour day, typewriter, steno pad, salary cut, end of the month—always the same thing, always the same thing. Yesterday, today, tomorrow—and in ten years.

You young ones, the ones under thirty, is this dispirited early-morning face all you’ve got too? It’s Sunday tomorrow. Won’t little images of your desires light up your eyes this afternoon? I mean, young man, you don’t buy yourself such a beautiful, lustrous yellow necktie if you don’t secretly believe that one day you’ll be the boss, with your
own car and a foreign bank account, do you? I mean, nice girl from a good family, you wouldn’t put on that pretty necklace if you weren’t hoping that a man would come and say that it suits you perfectly, would you? Little redhead, would you have spent twenty marks on that perm if you weren’t dreaming of a beauty pageant and a film contract? Greta Garbo was a salesclerk once too. The ride to work. Day after day. Will something come to break the monotony of the days? What? Mr. Douglas Fairbanks, a lottery win, a film contract, the dreamed-of promotion, the shower of gold from heaven? Will that come? No. Is there no prospect of a change or a break? Yes, there is. What is it? Illness, rationalization, unemployment. But you’re still riding to work. Yes, still. That’s good.

Gilgi looks out the window. The hopeless people in the streetcar—no, she has nothing in common with them, she doesn’t belong with them, she doesn’t want to belong with them. They’re gray and tired and lifeless. And if they’re not lifeless, they’re waiting for a miracle. Gilgi isn’t lifeless, and she doesn’t believe in miracles. She only believes in what she creates and what she earns. She isn’t satisfied, but she’s pleased. She’s earning money.

You people in the streetcar, aren’t you happy?

We’re so tired.

But you’re earning money, aren’t you?

It’s so little.

You could turn that little into more.

That’s so hard.

That’s what makes it fun.

It’s not fun.

Times are tough. No-one likes being what they are. No-one likes doing what they do.

Aren’t any of you young like me, aren’t any of you happy like me? Yes! One—two—three faces. Young, firm features, hard little lines on the forehead, chin thrust out to take on the world, alert eyes.

Gilgi wraps her hand around the edges of her little case. She holds on tightly. The sharp little movement is like a handshake. Yes, after all! Not I—but we. We! She lifts her head, and her eyes sparkle. You—you—you and I: we’ll make it.

Tick-tick-tick—rrrrrrrr—with reference to your letter of the 18th of … tick-tick-tick—rrrrrrrr … enclosed please find … tick-tick-tick … following our telephone conversation yesterday we wish to inform you …

The steno-typist Gilgi is typing the ninth letter for the firm of Reuter & Weber, Hosiery and Lingerie (Wholesale). Her typing is quick, clean, and error-free. Her little brown hands, her well-kept fingers with their short nails, belong to the machine, and the machine belongs to them.

Tick-tick-tick—rrrrrrrr … the steno-typist Gilgi goes in to the boss and puts the letters on his desk for him to sign.

“Wait, please,” Herr Reuter says, then reads each letter before inscribing his name with a somewhat forced vigor under the typed “Yours faithfully.” Gilgi waits. The pale winter sun draws circles on the yellow cupboard, on the coarse cork matting, and on Herr Reuter’s fuzzy egg-shaped head.

“Sit down, please,” Herr Reuter says. Gilgi bypasses the good leather armchair where the clients sit, removes a few files and papers from the simple cane chair, and sits down.
She gazes ahead of her incuriously, with her composed, expressionless professional countenance.

“Do you always look so unhappy?” Herr Reuter asks. That’s how it starts.

“I don’t look in the least unhappy.”

Gilgi is an experienced girl. She knows men, and what they variously want and don’t want, and how this is betrayed by the tone of their voices, their expressions, and their movements. If a man and a boss like Herr Reuter speaks in an uncertain voice, he’s in love, and if he’s in love, he wants something. Sooner or later. If he doesn’t get what he wants, he’s surprised, offended, and angry. The atmosphere between her and Herr Reuter has been building up for some time. Now it’s about to explode. Her colleague Fräulein Müller told her that Frau Reuter is away at the moment. That will accelerate the process.

Gilgi weighs things up. She has no desire to start a relationship with Herr Reuter, and she has no desire to mess up her job in his firm, and perhaps even to lose it. He’s a good boss. He pays overtime, treats his office staff well, is pleasant and courteous. Gilgi has had worse bosses.

She answers Herr Reuter’s questions politely, and decides to be slow on the uptake for as long as she possibly can. Lunch with him today? Unfortunately she has so little time. Herr Reuter becomes a little more insistent, and Gilgi promises to meet him after work, at two o’clock in the “Schwerthof” restaurant. Resisting too strongly might perhaps make her appear less harmless than she’d like.

A few hours later Gilgi is sitting with Herr Reuter in the “Schwerthof.” They’re up to coffee. Herr Reuter is smoking his first cigarette. He’s showing Gilgi photos of his wife and his child, as married men do when they’re prepared,
despite minor pangs of conscience, to be unfaithful. “A most charming woman,” Gilgi says.

Herr Reuter smokes his second cigarette. The pictures of his wife and child have found their way back into his wallet. He talks a lot. Now and then Gilgi says Yes or No.

Herr Reuter smokes his third cigarette, and mentions in passing that he can’t have such really interesting conversations with his wife as he can with her. “Ohhh?” Gilgi replies. “Yes,” Herr Reuter says, and strokes the back of her hand a few times. “How young you are, I could be your father, missy.” He expects a vigorous disclaimer. Gilgi just smiles innocently, which Herr Reuter interprets in his favor.

He smokes his fourth cigarette. Suddenly he’s overcome by the urge to feel unhappy. His marriage is a failure, his life is a mess, he’s an old fool, his job is just buying and selling. He employs bitterness, self-mockery, and a touch of pathos. When he gets to “I should get away from it all,” he throws his shoulders back so firmly that he endangers the seams of his jacket, then orders two liqueurs. Gilgi prefers not to drink alcohol so early in the day.

Herr Reuter smokes his fifth cigarette. His hand strays onto Gilgi’s knee, and she removes it gently. “I feel so alone, couldn’t you be a little bit nice to me, child?” She likes him very much, Gilgi says, and looks at him with the tolerant pity which women feel for men whose attentions are simultaneously annoying and flattering.

As Herr Reuter is about to light his sixth cigarette, Gilgi announces that she has to go. No, she can’t stay, not a minute longer. She has her English class at four o’clock. “You’re an ambitious girl,” Herr Reuter says, disappointedly and admiringly.

Yes, she’ll meet him again tomorrow night at the Cathedral Hotel. Gilgi is friendly, pleasant, and accommodating. She has her plan ready. The waiter comes, and Gilgi insists on paying for her own lunch. She gets her way, and says goodbye to Herr Reuter, leaving him with the pleasant feeling of being loved “for himself.”

A few minutes later she’s on the phone to Olga.

“Hello, marzipan girl, I’d like you to come by, around eleven tonight; I have to work till then.”

“Love to, Gilgi,” Olga says in her round, friendly voice. “Is something up?”

“Nooo, nothing at all. I’d just like to ask you for a small favor.”

“Well, tell me what it is!” Olga is so nosy, Olga always wants to know everything right away.

“It can wait till eleven, Olga. See you.”

“See you.”

How nice that you’ve got Olga. Olga is the brightest color in Gilgi’s life. And if she didn’t have such a distaste for the word “romance,” you could say: for Gilgi, Olga represents romance. She’s looking forward to Olga’s visit. But you’re not to think about it beforehand. Your hour of laughter at eleven tonight has to be earned first.

Gilgi sits in the Berlitz School. “Learn Foreign Languages!” Gilgi is learning Spanish, English, French. Three lessons straight. When she finally makes it to her little attic room in Mittelstrasse, her head is buzzing with foreign words. “I want to be happy” … “sous les toits de Paris” … the dry instruction in foreign business correspondence is dissolved by the bright melodies of hit songs. “I want
to be happy” … Gilgi looks longingly at the wide, padded divan. She’s a little tired, should she … just for a half-hour …? No time. “I want to be happy” … Gilgi winds up the gramophone. Richard Tauber as a pick-me-up. I kiss your hand, madame … She takes a samovar from the cupboard and brews tea. Takes off her jumper and skirt, hangs them carefully on the hook on the door, and slips into a yellow silk kimono. This little room is where she feels at home. She rented it so that she could work in peace. She pays for it, and it belongs to her. She had the walls hung with brown hessian. She bought the furniture gradually, piece by piece: divan, desk, cupboard, chair. Bought it all entirely with her own earnings. She did overtime to pay for the little Erika-brand typewriter and the gramophone.

She winds up the gramophone again: For it can’t last forever … Haven’t you made something of yourself? You’ll make even more of yourself. She sits down at the desk, rests her head with its short brown hair on her hands, and for the time it takes to smoke a cigarette she does nothing at all. Thinks things over a little: so far, she’s saved twelve hundred marks. In a year from now, she can go to Paris for three months, to London for three months, and to Granada for three months. Maybe by herself, maybe with Olga. But she’s going. She’s calculated everything, and decided everything, exactly. If you can speak three foreign languages perfectly, then you’re more or less guaranteed against unemployment. And maybe one day she’ll give up office work anyway. She has other prospects. Has a talent for designing and making clothes like few others. When the young lady Gilgi goes out in the evening, men’s and women’s heads turn; and if she said she bought her dresses from Damm or Gerstel, people might believe her,
although she’s made everything herself. She owns three evening gowns, and none of them cost more than twenty marks. Maybe she’ll open a small fashion studio one day in Paris or Berlin, maybe—maybe—oh, she’s still young, and she’s open to all ways of providing for herself, except as a wife, a film actress, or a beauty queen.

She reaches into the desk drawer and pulls out a pile of manuscript, an exercise book, and a battered novel: Jerome,
Three Men in a Boat
. She’s translating it into German, just for practice, at the moment. Maybe later she’ll find a way of translating for money. Gilgi writes. Writes, reads, crosses out, writes—until Olga arrives.