Gilgi (3 page)

Pretty Olga, beautiful Olga! Suddenly, the austere little workroom smells like a summer garden, and Gilgi’s hard little face becomes softer and younger. Happy Olga! A well-disposed God attached a champagne cork to her soul. Whatever happens, Olga won’t go under. She has the most delightful blond hair, the softest, most radiant blonde’s face. She has the most carefree eyes, blue-gray, with cheeky little flecks in the iris. She has the lazy, langorous movements of a harem-girl, and the intellect of a Jewish essayist. She has no ties to anything or anyone, she’s the most independent being that Gilgi can imagine. She admires Olga, although she has neither the ability nor the desire ever to be anything like her.

“Do you want tea, marzipan girl? Apples, mandarins, bananas? I’ve got them all here.” How pretty you look, Olga! Gilgi can’t bring herself to say the words, and instead scolds: “More dirty marks on your blouse! How disgustingly slovenly you are!” Olga is lying on the divan, playing with some mandarin-peel: “I’ve really got to get organized now, the Americans are coming to Berlin in the spring.”

“Ahh.” Gilgi is upset. So in the spring Olga will be in Berlin, and then she’ll be traveling, here and there, who knows when she’ll come back to Cologne. At the moment she’s copying a few paintings in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum for an American family. As well as making loud posters for a cinema in Hohestrasse. Olga paints whatever people want. Whether she’s a great artist is something which Gilgi can’t judge. Olga herself says No. Perhaps she’s right. When she needs money, she works; when she has money, she travels. Often unaccompanied, sometimes accompanied.

“You said you needed a favor, Gilgi?”

“Yes. You have to take a man off my hands.”

“Is he a nice man?”

“Good off-the-peg stock—not your type.”

“So what am I supposed to do with him?”

“He’s my boss, he’s in love. If he realizes that I don’t like him, it’ll make things difficult at the office. You have to divert his attention from me.”

“Uh-huh. But if he’s in love with you, then he won’t let me …” Gilgi assumes her best woman-of-the-world expression.

“The guy’s not in love with me specifically, he’s just decided recently to be in love—generally. His attraction to me is arbitrary, a product of his imagination …”

“We’ll change his mind,” Olga says, discreetly pushing an apple-core behind the cushions of the divan. “So how shall we do it?” Gilgi outlines her plan briefly, Olga approves—only: “But how will I get rid of him again?”

“Oh, Olga!” Gilgi perches herself on the desk. “You’re so much more of a lady than I am—not because you’re already twenty-five—because you just are. Men don’t push
so hard so fast with you as they do with a little girl like me, and anyway, after a couple of weeks you can tell him that you’re going on your travels.” Olga makes a gesture with her hand to convey that she feels herself more than capable of dealing with a situation like that.

Somewhere in Cologne, Herr Reuter (Hosiery and Lingerie, Wholesale) is lying in the marital bed which his wife has forsaken, suffering from sleeplessness and the desire to be ten years younger. I’ve got a little brown-haired girl—it’s touching to think how the little one is yearning for you …

In the attic room in Mittelstrasse Gilgi winds up the gramophone, Olga chooses the record: … If you’re coming to Hawaii / If the … Neither of them finds Herr Reuter interesting enough to warrant another minute’s conversation.

On Sunday Gilgi and Herr Reuter are sitting together in the Cathedral Hotel. Gilgi feels that she has eaten, Herr Reuter feels that he has dined. They’re drinking Haut-Sauternes. With each glass, Herr Reuter’s currant-black eyes narrow by fractions of a millimeter. The shape of Gilgi’s little breasts is clearly visible under her blue-gray velvet dress, convincing Herr Reuter that Gilgi is “the” woman who understands him. He tells her this, and he believes it. He lays his emotional life out in front of her like an excited poker player slamming down his cards. That’s the way he is. Gilgi acknowledges receipt of this information politely, and with a modicum of interest. You poor fool, if you were younger there’d be no need to waste any time on you. Stop it, enough with the lyricism, it doesn’t
go with the pimple on your chin. Why can’t I just say: don’t speculate if you can’t accumulate, don’t invest emotional capital in a doomed venture. I can’t say that. You poor old man, your blend of Business Baroque would be destroyed by a simple No. All right, then! Ultimately all I care about is myself, isn’t it? About the hundred-fifty marks which I earn in your office every month, about working without you getting in the way, without having to put up with your cotton-candy emotions—all right, then, sir!

“Your health!”—“Your health!” Clink-clink. Herr Reuter is holding Gilgi’s hand, saying they shouldn’t talk so much, it’s time for them to … stop talking so much. There are so many people around. Well, if you consider that they all need hosiery and lingerie, then you have to approve of them and like them, but if they weren’t sitting here and still needed hosiery and lingerie—you’d like them even better. Waiters are also annoying when they’re standing around with nothing to do. “Scusmewaitah [Excuse me, waiter], another bottle!” Gilgi chooses not to hear Herr Reuter’s invitation to call him Friedrich; at this rate, it’ll be Fritz next.

A lady walks by, scanning all the tables. A beautiful lady, a lustrous lady. “An acquaintance of mine,” Gilgi says falteringly, while her left eye is flashing out the message: About time, Olga!

“Good evening, Fräulein Kron.”

“Good evening, Fräulein Jahn. May I introduce …”

“A pleasure,” Herr Reuter says, lying.

“Arranged to meet some acquaintances—after the theater—not here yet—so embarrassing—” Olga’s eyes express helplessness, her marzipan fingers run softly over the expensive Russian squirrel fur on which she has so far
paid three installments. “Yes, if you …” Gilgi is visibly at a loss, disappointed, embarrassed. Herr Reuter comes to the rescue: “If you would like to sit with us until …” He’s a gentleman. Not willingly. “If I may! It’ll only be for a moment.” Olga looks at Herr Reuter with boundless gratitude. He helps her out of her coat. He’s a gentleman. Not unwillingly. He notices that other men envy him when they see Olga sitting down at his table. More supply creates more demand. Herr Reuter decides that Olga is beautiful. But she’s in the way nevertheless, because Gilgi’s little brown hand has now retreated into the unreachable distance.

Olga tells stories of her travels to Cairo and Luxor and Spitzbergen. Gilgi goes to the telephone cabinet to call home. When she returns, Herr Reuter no longer thinks Olga is in the way.

After a while, Gilgi disappears to the bathroom for a quarter-hour. Herr Reuter remembers that, actually, he prefers blondes. He becomes witty. Olga looks at him admiringly, and Herr Reuter becomes convinced that he has underestimated himself his whole life long. Gilgi comes back, sits there quietly and modestly, and lets Olga outshine her. She’s an unremarkable little girl. Herr Reuter recalls some rather rusty principles: not to get romantically involved with one’s employees, and so on.

Gilgi goes into the foyer for ten minutes in search of a newspaper. Olga’s fresh, rosy blonde’s skin shimmers through cream-colored lace, convincing Herr Reuter that Olga is “the” woman who understands him.

A half-hour later he escorts the ladies home: first Gilgi, then Olga.

EARLY IN THE MORNING, A QUARTER-HOUR before the alarm clock is due to ring, Frau Kron comes into Gilgi’s room and sits down on the side of her bed. She strokes Gilgi’s bare arms and narrow, little-girl’s shoulders with her honest, roughened housewife’s hands. For a moment Gilgi prefers not to feel surprised by these unexpected caresses, nor to repel them. The familiar closeness of her mother’s body, the faint aroma of laundry soap on her hands, give Gilgi a feeling of primitive comfort like a baby animal which is safe in its nest.

“Jilgi, my child, you do love me, don’t you?”

“What’s going on?” Gilgi sits bolt upright, looking startled and mistrustful.

“You do love me, don’t you, Jilgi?”

Gilgi looks at her mother: her puffy cheeks are blazing red, as they do after particularly energetic washing or cake-baking days. Gilgi realizes that the question is only a starting point, heaven knows of what. Odd starting point. Superfluous question. She’s never thought about whether she loves her mother. She looks at Frau Kron’s broad, fleshy back with compassion.

“Jilgi, you turn twenty-one today.”

“I know.”

“Well,” Frau Kron says, and “Well” again, before falling silent. Her full, pale lips start to tremble.

“Spit it out, Mother.” Frau Kron remains silent. Impatiently, Gilgi pushes her long, slender feet out from under the covers—she could at least do her exercises.

“Jilgi!” Frau Kron’s voice is shrill and dry. “You see, you’re not our child.”

Gilgi forgets to breathe.

“What—did—you—just—say?”

“You’re not our child.”

“I see!” Gilgi doesn’t quite understand. Ten minutes later, she does understand. “I see,” she says again.

Keep standing firmly on your two feet, make sure you don’t waver. If that’s all it is. Her face is indifferent, she’s reacting on the inside.

“I’ll be at the breakfast table in twenty minutes, Mother.”

Frau Kron understands that she’s supposed to leave. “Don’t let it worry you, child.”

“No,” Gilgi says, bending over to touch her toes. Frau Kron leaves.

Keep standing solidly on your two feet. Up—down. If that’s how it is, that’s all right with her. She just wonders why this revelation was held back until her twenty-first birthday, specifically. She has no intention of letting something like this disturb her equilibrium. Is she supposed to be devastated? Are powerful displays of emotion expected from her? Is she required to do something in particular? How does one behave in a case like this?

Her mother is a little seamstress. Father unknown. She comes from proletarian stock. She’s happy about that, because she’s never set any store in belonging to bourgeois society.

Gilgi walks into the plush room. The Washington, the cloth rectangle, Herr Kron reading the newspaper—everything is just as alien to her as it always was. No more, no less. On the table, the usual ring-shaped birthday cake with its nice, regular, wavy top. On the arm of
the sofa, Frau Kron’s presents: long white kid gloves and a length of dark-blue silk for a dress (all bought together with Gilgi), and, on her own initiative, a bottle of
eau de cologne
and an impossible handbag, which also contains Herr Kron’s invariable birthday present of a fifty-mark note.

“Thanks, Father.” Gilgi takes Herr Kron’s hand. He looks up from his newspaper.

“I hope the next year is a happy one for you, Jilgi, with good health, and—jus’ forget what Mother told you before.”

“I already have, father.”

“Well, tha’s all right, then.”

“Thanks, Mother.” Gilgi kisses Frau Kron on the temple.

“D’you like your presents, child? The silk won’t shrink when you make it up. What d’you think of the handbag?”

“Quite beautiful, Mother.” Gilgi picks up the handbag. Mother is looking so nervous and expectant, you have to say something more, but what, what, what? “Quite beautiful, really qui …” She’s expecting something, she was worried, now you have to say something, something loving and kind, but you can’t just do that to order, you can’t do it precisely because it’s expected, your tongue feels as heavy as lead, heavier and heavier … “I—I mean—quite beautiful, really … I mean, I’m—so happy, Mother—really.” Gilgi breathes out and sinks into her chair. How do other people always know exactly the right words to say at the right time?

“Eat, Jilgi, drink, Jilgi.” Eat, Gilgi, drink, Gilgi. She forces some birthday cake down, isn’t really hungry. Eat, Gilgi, drink, Gilgi! Damned decent of these people. For
twenty-one years they’ve given me accommodation, food, and drink. Got me an education. That man there who’s reading the newspaper, and who has no actual responsibility for me, gives me fifty marks every year. Why? That fat woman there, she cried for five nights and couldn’t sleep that time I had scarlet fever. Why? Eat, Gilgi, drink, Gilgi. And what about me? How have I paid them? Dammit, I have debts.

“Another piece of cake, Jilgi?”

“No, thanks, Mother.” Should I go to a
Kaffeeklatsch
with her some time soon? Pointless waste of time. Should I spend every evening at home now? Pointless waste of time. Being with you two is always a pointless waste of time. Was, is, and ever shall be. Eat, Gilgi, drink, Gilgi. And for sure, if I spill even half a tear now, I’ll smash everything up.

Gilgi has gone to see her friend Pit.

“Pit, my birth was a mistake.”

“Lots of them are.”

“Don’t you think children ought to be grateful to their parents?”

“For what?”

“For money and feelings and all kinds of things.”

“Gilgi, you know I don’t have time for stupid conversations.”

Eat, Gilgi, drink, Gilgi. She’s perched on the decrepit camp bed, her legs crossed, her chin resting on her hands.

“I’m freezing, Pit.”

“Then you’ll have to go somewhere where it’s warmer.” Pit is unfriendly; he usually is. Gilgi doesn’t mind.—Poor
guy. He never has any money. He’s studying economics—and he earns his living by tutoring. Now and then he plays the piano in seedy bars. Sometimes he doesn’t have enough to eat. They’ve been friends for years. She likes him, you can rely on him.

Pit is sitting at the table, with books and notepads in front of him, and a pot of black tea. Gilgi knows he can’t offer her any, because he only possesses one cup. Pit isn’t equipped for visitors.

Gilgi looks around the bare, unadorned room, a shabby room in the old part of Cologne. She sees Pit’s mop of red hair, his white face with the sharp, angry lines around the mouth, his small, intelligent eyes. Pit’s crazy! Everything could be so easy for him. His father has the best house in Marienburg, has money and a famous name. Pit is his only son—

“Why did you leave home, Pit?”

“What business is that of yours?” He doesn’t like being asked.