Gilgi (11 page)

Herr Kron folds up his newspaper and leaves the room, making a big point of not looking at his wife. As he pushes out the door, his broad back looks hostile and determined, suggesting: won’t put up with it—not that kind of thing—in my house! And Gilgi thinks unhappily that from Herr Kron’s point of view, he and his back are right. And of course both the Krons have spoken about her, about … it’s intolerable to know that they’ve spoken about these things, so inexpressibly embarrassing.

“Gilgi,” Frau Kron says suddenly, with a slightly plaintive undertone in her voice, and completely forgetting to
adopt Cologne dialect. “Gilgi, you’re not doing bad things, you’re not bad, you’re not that kind of girl, are you?” Gilgi clenches her hands until the knuckles stand out, waxy white on the skin. It’s horrible, a conversation like this! She should have moved out of here ages ago. Her mother is drilling questioning looks into her face. It’s unbearable. “You weren’t with a man last night, were you, Gilgi?” Gilgi is ashamed unexpectedly—for her mother. How can she say such a thing, and in such a way? Reproach, sympathy, interest, curiosity—all justified—yes, yes, all justified—but so revolting. Everything between Martin and me is a matter for me and me alone. Why doesn’t she understand that she shouldn’t think about any part of it—I mean, I don’t do that—I don’t think about what goes on between her and her husband …

“Gilgi, you haven’t done anything hateful, have you?”

“What you call hateful, Mother—always becomes hateful, only becomes hateful, when a third person thinks about it and talks about it.” Gilgi is hoping desperately that her mother will understand that this conversation is impossible. But Frau Kron only hears the confirmation of what she feared. “Gilgi, I would never have thought that you …,” she’s crying softly—“you were such a good girl, some man has hypnotized you, some man has seduced you, why didn’t he come to the house like a respectable person?” Ach, God almighty, these touching efforts to absolve me of guilt—a guilt that doesn’t even exist. And Gilgi wants so much to explain: that she loves Martin, that they’re very happy when they’re together, and that it’s all the most simple, the most normal, the most natural thing in the world. But here in this room absolutely nothing is simple, here everything is terribly sinister and complicated and repulsively dramatic.

Her mother is sobbing. That should make you sorry, but it makes you angry. For God’s sake, where’s the tragedy here? Just stop it, would you? An unpleasant emotion rises within Gilgi: alienation—dislike—hostility. Frau Kron lifts her head: “Who is he, then? And, Gilgi”—her voice is bright with hope now—“will he marry you?”

Yes, that was just what I needed! Gilgi stands up. “Will he—marry me? I don’t know. I won’t marry him—I do know that.”

Gilgi disappears into her room and bolts the door behind her. She fishes her big suitcase from the top of the wardrobe, and packs: clothes, underwear, shoes. She moves quickly, quietly, cautiously. In her parents’ room next door, she can make out Herr Kron’s rumbling beer-fed bass and Frau Kron’s excited whispering. She has to leave—it’s the only decent thing she can do. Oh, it’s quite clear to her that her parents must be indignant about her behavior, they have the kind of rock-solid moral ideas which can’t be overturned from one day to the next. She pauses in her packing: hears her father in the next room saying something about
“laying down the law.” My God, what a ridiculous, petty story. Moving more quickly now, she tosses underwear into the suitcase. A swift exit. It’s the only solution. You simply can’t stay here, be treated as an errant child, magnanimously forgiven when there’s absolutely nothing to forgive.—The door-handle is pressed down from the other side: “Jilgi!”—Herr Kron’s voice sounds annoyed. Finding the door bolted makes him furious: “Either you’re home by eight tonight, or you need never come home again!” Heavy footsteps, and the front door closes with a loud bang.

Gilgi treads on the suitcase with both feet until the lock
catches. She opens the door quietly, hears Frau Kron having her ritual argument with the cleaning woman in the kitchen:

“An’ if the butter isn’t good enough for you …”

“In other houses …”

“I could get ten new cleaning women tomorrow.”

“Carryin’ the heavy trash cans downstairs an’ draggin’ coal up from the cellar an’ then rancid butter for breakf—”

“The butter is not rancid.”

“Yes, it is rancid …”

With a massive effort, Gilgi drags the heavy suitcase down the stairs, it’s almost pulling her right shoulder from the socket, her hand hurts … an empty taxi is driving past outside—Stop! Stop!

“What’s wrong, little Gilgi? You turn up in the middle of the night—with a huge suitcase?’

“It’s nine in the morning, Martin.” Gilgi smiles wanly and drops the suitcase with a thud in the middle of the room.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Martin says, simply and convincingly. Still not quite awake, he looks alternately at the uncharacteristically elegiac Gilgi-girl and at the suitcase. His hair is tangled, his left cheek is showing the pattern of the lace on his pillow, he’s thrown an old, battered raincoat over his pyjamas. He looks a little like a refugee, an opera-prince in disguise, or a non-gentleman cracksman. Slowly he rubs the back of his hand over the hard stubble on his chin, and suddenly he’s awake. “Wait a moment! Before you start what will doubtless be a lengthy explanation, I’d like to give you a kiss, and for that I need to wash and
shave first.” He rushes into the bathroom with the speed of Paavo Nurmi.

And Gilgi does something which she’s never done before, something which is more disorienting and momentous for her than her flight from home: she telephones the office, is put through to Herr Reuter: “… I feel so sick and miserable …”

“Not flu, I hope?”

“No, no, just …”

“Stay in bed …”

Yes, she’ll be there tomorrow—

“A speedy recovery”—“Thank you.” She hangs up, finds herself irresponsible, unfair, lazy, and slovenly. Sits down on her suitcase, cries for a while, then is pleased again because now she’ll be spending the whole day with Martin, and has a bad conscience because she’s pleased. Feels a sharp pang as the finality of her separation from the Krons gradually dawns on her, suddenly feels a quite pointless longing for the silly, green plush Washington room, and shudders at the thought of sitting there again—it’s a terrible mess, everything inside her has become a battleground of bitterly conflicting emotions, everything is rolling, rushing, shaking, there’s no fixed point—only Martin. He enters proudly carrying a tray, having used the brief interval not only to dress himself smartly, but also to brew coffee swiftly. Rolls, butter, jam, honey—it’s all there. It takes only moments to arrange everything on the coffee table, and incidentally to break the handle off a cup. An exquisitely timed movement drops the honey-jar precisely on the narrow strip of parquet floor between the runner and the rug, where it quietly explodes into fragments.

“So, come here, little sad-eyed girl.” He lifts her off the
suitcase, sets her on his lap—“you can stay there like that until my left leg goes to sleep again.— … that’s the way! She gives me a lecture the other day: anyone who’s healthy and has enough to eat simply doesn’t have the right to be unhappy—and now she’s crying all over me, turning my lapels to mush.”

“You’re right, Martin.” Gilgi lifts her face. Registers with pleasure and pride that he remembers even her modest remarks. “Well—you see … and … then …” it turns into a long and more or less clear report. “And what really gets me down is precisely the fact that they were fair and decent to me, so that from pure, awful egotism I wish that I could do something really special for them too one day.
And I like them, but there just isn’t any common ground. I can’t be honest and open with them, and always lying revolts me. If they doubt me, it’s embarrassing, and if they believe me faithfully it’s even more embarrassing.” Oh no, she’s not sad anymore, she’s here with Martin, which is where she belongs. She’s behaved like some sheltered innocent from a century ago, doesn’t understand it herself. There’s that theory of heredity, or whatever it’s called; that’s the only explanation for her attack of sentimentality. The Krons will realize that children always go their own way sooner or later, and they’ll accept that. They won’t be unhappy, Herr Kron won’t be unhappy at all. He’s only unhappy when a Carnival parade is cancelled or people don’t laugh at his jokes, or if business is bad. Frau Kron’s capacity for unhappiness is equally limited. And one day they won’t be angry anymore, then she’ll visit them quite often—and she has Martin, she has her work, tomorrow she’ll be more punctual than ever at the office—everything will turn out right, everything is all right now. Gilgi slides
off Martin’s knees. “Just want to write my mother a quick letter.”

“The one in St. Moritz?”

“No, of course not; the other one.”

“I find your family situation rather complicated.”

“Dear Mother,” Gilgi writes—“Don’t be sad. I won’t be living with you and Father from now on, I don’t want the way I live to upset you anymore. There’s no need to worry about me, I’m working and I know how to make my own living. I’m very sad about how ungrateful I must seem to you both, and how ungrateful I in fact am. But if you need me sometime—I’ll always do anything for you. Don’t try to find me for the time being. I don’t want to come back permanently. That’s better for you both, and for me. I’ll ring you up from time to time, and if you don’t want to talk to me you can just hang up. But whenever you want—I’ll come to see you. Don’t be angry with me. If that’s possible.   Your Gilgi

“If you’re feeling good about things again by the time spring cleaning starts, and Father doesn’t mind, then I’ll come for four days and help you.”

“Back in a minute, Martin.” She stuffs the letter into her pocket. Runs into the street. Buys a quarter-kilo of almond roughs—Frau Kron’s favorite candy—and a nickel-plated coffee-pot—the old china pot started to leak yesterday. She gets the sales clerk to make a parcel of the pot and the candy and put the letter on top: yes, the messenger will deliver it in the course of the morning.

A quarter-hour later, relieved and content, she’s back at Martin’s. “If I have to do something, I’ve always got to do it right away. Delaying things makes me ill.—Right—and now let’s unpack—”

Martin’s eyes look thoughtful. “Gilgi,” he says, and puts his hands on her shoulders. She looks so disconcertingly young, the little one, and notwithstanding her habitually exaggerated independence she looks almost helpless. He can’t offer her his insecure existence as a replacement for the security of her parents’ home. “Little Gilgi, I’m delighted that you’re with me now, but—don’t you think you might’ve made a silly mistake? You shouldn’t be doing this for my sake, you understand? And if you like, I’ll sort out your problems at home, because after all I feel myself responsible for you.”

All the softness disappears out of Gilgi’s face, her voice sounds hard and bright: “I sort out my problems myself, and if I make silly mistakes—then I pay the price myself.—And I’ll tell you something, Martin”—she shakes his hands off her shoulders almost roughly—“I won’t tolerate people feeling responsible for me, that’s the worst way people can insult me, I …”

“Well, don’t get upset, my little canary bird.” A cheerful Martin carries Gilgi’s suitcase into the bedroom, rejoicing with all his characteristic insouciance at the advent of a nice, entertaining extra resident for the apartment. Gilgi trots slowly behind him:

“I’m still not certain at aaalll,” she says, trying unsuccessfully to lengthen her short, straight nose by pulling on it, “I had absolutely no intention—there’s absolutely no question of me living here—you know I’ve always been independent—I have my room—”

Ignoring these words completely, Martin opens the lid of the suitcase: “Look, your beautiful red evening dress! Think how happy my crumpled, ugly little overcoat will be to have this hanging beside it from now on—”

“That’s only a slip, Martin—and, my evening dresses! There’s no danger of me putting them in with your things. So that you can pull them off their hangers every time you take a suit out!—There’s another wardrobe here—that’s where they’ll go—”

In the afternoon they’re sitting in the library, in the middle of all the books they’ve emptied from the crates. With loving enthusiasm, Martin fishes volume after volume out of the chaos, reads a few pages aloud, thinks something is beautiful, explains to Gilgi why he thinks it’s beautiful—“and you’ll read that—and that—and that—because you’re not nearly as one-dimensional and unimaginative as you make out, little Gilgi.” He tries to convince her with her own kind of logic: “Whatever is beautiful brings pleasure. There are some things which can’t be recognized as beautiful straightaway, you have to train a little bit first. Because you feel pleasure in the end, the training is worth it. It’s precisely the pleasures which you earn for yourself that are the most profound, the most lasting, they belong to you. And you understand, don’t you, that you can never have enough pleasures that belong to you?”

Gilgi nods and is ready to believe Martin blindly. A book which is held so tenderly in his elegant, slender fingers must surely be beautiful, even if it’s not necessarily by Jack London, Bengt Berg, or Remarque. She thinks about it: “You know, maybe I’ve always preferred useful things to beautiful things, or more likely I’ve only found useful things beautiful.—But I’ll learn all right.”

“Yes, you will.
There are less intelligent and less sensitive people than you, my cute little boy. And there are
other ways—other areas—in which your eyes are closed like those of a new-born baby, but I’ll teach you to see soon enough.” He kisses the back of her neck and feels a childlike joy in the educational work he is beginning.

“Oh, Martin!” Gilgi picks up a Cervantes in the original from the rug—“do you speak Spanish, Martin? Wonderful. We’ll read this book together, it’ll be good practice for me, now I’m learning Spanish so that later …”

The next morning, Gilgi wakes up to the feeling that something incredibly life-changing and important has happened. Martin is lying beside her. Every morning, when she wakes up, Martin will be lying beside her.