Gilgi (7 page)

When she arrives at the office she feels good, and happy. She didn’t ride on the streetcar, but walked, which takes just under an hour. Her clothes smell of the fresh air, and her face, which is usually pale brown, has a touch of red.

She’s the first. She’s come ten minutes too early. Oh, she’s often there too early, and never a minute too late. She takes her steno pad out of the drawer almost lovingly. Slips the cloth cover off her typewriter, cleans the typeface of each key, and puts in a new ribbon. A new ribbon always gives her a little lift.

Fat Müller arrives, followed closely by little Behrend. “Morn’.”—“Morn’.” They sit next to Gilgi. They’re both nice girls—a bit cheeky and careless, but not nasty.

Fat Müller puts a pile of sandwiches, a vacuum flask with coffee, and a cup without a handle on the table in front of her. Little Behrend is talking about last night.
“So then he says to me …” she whispers to Müller, which doesn’t bother Gilgi a bit, the two are great friends, and anyway Behrend’s experiences aren’t of the kind to be confided to people who are just colleagues. Sometimes you might think that Behrend only has adventures the night before so that she can tell Müller about them the morning after. Müller is too fat and too passive to have adventures herself, she’s satisfied just to hear about them—as though Behrend lives for her too. Crazy kid. Cute, with her curly black hair and her round brown eyes—a face like a squirrel. And she’s always on the move, always has something going on, always has the latest hit song in her head and in her blood. Now she’s sitting on the desk, dangling her pretty, cheeky legs: “… and then when the band plays—really sweet and schmaltzy—and I’m with a good-looking guy—well, I don’t know what a girl’s supposed to do, so that nothing happens afterwards …” She looks enquiringly at Gilgi. “You just can’t say No,” fat Mueller says triumphantly. Little Behrend makes a sour face, then she laughs: “No, I can’t.” She pirouettes over to Accounts and steals a few indelible pencils … For it can’t last forehever … “just think, one day you’re fifty and men don’t want to kiss you anymore!” She tugs at her blouse—a gift from some guy. Why shouldn’t some guy give her a blouse? That’s not the sign of a bad girl, not by a long way. She can’t buy anything for herself, has to give all her salary to her mother. Gilgi admires the blouse. It’s very elegant—with hand-stitched embroidery—and doesn’t go at all with the threadbare little skirt and the worn-out cheap shoes. Gilgi likes tarty little Behrend a thousand times more than her well-behaved cousins. She’s as nippy and hard-working as an ant, and always happy and helpful.

After work Gilgi visits Olga. “My God, Olga, are you sick?”

Olga is lying in bed, with a wet handkerchief on her forehead, and melancholy in her eyes. “I’m not sick, it’s just that I was at a masked ball, now I feel queasy.”

Gilgi picks up a few articles of clothing from the floor and sits down on the side of Olga’s bed: “Drank too much?”—“Never been so sober in all my life,” Olga complains. “What was that? Why did I go? God, I’m living here like a combination of a Trappist monk and a Benedictine nun—I thought: have a little fun for once. Course, I must be suffering from advanced hardening of the arteries, deciding to go to a masked ball, of all things: the petty bourgeoisie stepping out—couples kissing like crazy, I won’t be able to stand the sight of couples kissing for at least the next year—it stank of sweat and cold cigar ash, disgusting! I believe my hair still stinks of smoke even now … could you hand me the bottle of lavender water from the table? What? It’s on the floor? Is it broken? No? Well, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t have been on the floor. Aaach, I just find life so revolting.” For a few seconds, Olga is dripping with
Weltschmerz
. For a few seconds only, then she throws out her arms, sits up with a jerk, the compress slips off, damp blond curls are stuck to Olga’s forehead. She takes a photograph from under her pillow, shows it to Gilgi: a man’s face, with good features. “Take a look at him, Gilgi—would you believe that I was married to him for six months?” No, Gilgi wouldn’t. She makes an impatient gesture, she knows the story of Olga’s marriage,
and Olga has held Franzi’s photo under her nose a hundred times before.
“Oh, Franzi!” Olga slobbers on the picture. “I do love him, even now—but only when I’m not with him.
When we were together, it was terrible. He was as jealous as a touring-company Othello. Such a smart man, but—whatever you do—the point where being a man starts is the point where being smart stops. I became quite dazed. There was always shouting, shouting, shouting—about nothing. I mustn’t look from the top down, nor from the bottom up, and sideways was completely out of the question. But you’ve got to be allowed to look, one way or another. I was already getting my first worry-lines, all my reserves of humor were used up, all …”

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.