Gilgi (14 page)

And if relentless activity, if a powerful will to live is diverted from its course, then it turns towards its mirror image—not to passivity—but to a kind of rage for self-destruction. Nothing matters now, tomorrow and debts and confusion—nothing matters — —

“Gilgi, my little Maori girl …” A thousand words of love, a thousand silly words, you’re submerged in them, you’re lying under a mantle of words, probably you’re making a final feeble effort to find them ridiculous, formulating a cheeky, trivial little remark which promptly loses its way between the brain and the lips.

Warm, blue-sky days follow. They go out walking—“no, Martin, really—I think it’s boring to run around so aimlessly, I love walking long distances, but I must be going somewhere.”

“We are going somewhere.”

“I seeee—so, where is it that we’re going?”

“Well, we’re sure to end up someplace.”

“Yes, but I’ve got to know that when I set off.”

“Martin, I don’t know—don’t walk so fast, Martin—I mean, you can’t possibly think that these ugly, gray, rotting allotments are beautiful!—It’s creepy here. Makes me think of sex-murderers.”

“Well, that shows they’re interesting.”

“Martin, in summer—in summer we’ll go swimming together in the Rhine—and we’ll watch the bicycle races at the stadium. That’s lovely, Martin: the guys in their colorful jerseys strewn all over the grass. And the marvelously exciting noise of the rushing wheels—ssssssst—as they flash around the curves—crash-bang, someone’s down—you feel like you’ve fallen down with him. And everything is boiling and itching and glowing with excitement and tension—and a wide peaceful sky above it all, and the air is warm and trembling, and in the dark the arc lights look like stars which have fallen from the sky …” “Oh, my little Gilgi is turning poetical!”—“It’s only a reflex, Martin.”

It’s fun to mooch around in Cologne’s Old Town. Winding little alley-ways and uneven cobblestones—hot chestnuts, ten for ten pfennigs!—You fill your overcoat pockets with them and warm your fingertips on them.—Odd little cafés … “No, Martin, come on—we can’t eat here—those cold cutlets must have been in the window for at least six months—if you go in there and order some, the waiter will take them out and dust them off and …”

“You can imagine such unpleasant things, little Gilgi!”

Houses twisted by age, tiny shops with windows no bigger than pillows, crammed with old clothes and suits, blocks of chocolate as old as the Bulgarian farmer in those yogurt advertisements, clocks which have taken a sacred
oath never to go again, guitars, children’s trumpets … “Himioben” is the name over one of the doors. “Himioben,” Martin says, enraptured.—“Himioben—such a wonderful name. Gilgi, I could never be completely angry with a city where someone has that name.” And has a vision of an amazingly beautiful, mysterious Jewish girl with shining black hair and soft round eyes and entrancing lashes—invents a fantastic story on the spot, he can do things you wouldn’t expect, this Martin—you’re standing in the shabbiest district of Cologne, outside a crooked little house which looks like it would blow over in the first puff of wind, and you feel like you’re stuck between two pages of the Old Testament—some vague idea: serving seven years—something about cornfields and gleaning and—whither thou goest, I will go …

“Well, let’s go in and take a look at the beautiful Jewish girl,” Gilgi suggests, because now she’s quite curious. And it turned out to be a puny little red-headed guy who shot up like a jack-in-the-box behind all the junk on his shop counter—nothing like a beautiful Jewish girl. And Martin bought a pair of suspenders—mauve with grass-green spots, and Gilgi thinks that even seventy-five pfennigs is too much to pay for a shattered illusion.—“But the name is still beautiful, and the idea too—but I won’t wear the suspenders—”

The final disappointment!—Gilgi throws the little package into the Rhine at the Hohenzollern Bridge—“so it can float into the North Sea and be eaten by a flounder.—You know, Martin, I could probably forgive my husband if he punched me on the nose sometime—but if he ever turned up wearing suspenders, I’d leave him.”

“Wives who make such elevated aesthetic demands of
their husbands demonstrate a very lax morality.—Please don’t fall into the Rhine, Gilgi—it’ll be too cold for me to jump in after you until the end of April.”

And they look at paintings, listen to concerts. Wearing a long black lace dress, Gilgi sits in Gürzenich Hall. Tries to adopt a stylishly attentive expression, but turns her eyes again and again to Martin’s hard, angular profile. Hears sounds which bore her, and feels a strong desire to give Martin a kiss. Hears sounds which she likes and feels an even stronger desire to kiss Martin. And just can’t stand the fact that at the moment he’s occupied with something other than her, must at least touch his hair briefly. Wants him to laugh about something with her, to explain to her quickly why so many people have such silly expressions and closed eyes when they’re listening to music—and there’s a fat man sitting beside them who’s breathing so loudly in time with the music that he almost sounds like he’s snoring … “Pssssst!” go the people in the row behind. Like angry cobras! “Please, Martin, just tell me quickly if it’s cobras that hiss like that—schschsch … like a garden hose when someone pushes the air out of it …”

Literature, music, painting—it’s a funny thing, art. One person’s Rubinstein—is another’s dance-band leader, one person’s Rembrandt—is another’s commercial artist. What can you do? It’s a long way to Tipperary—it’s a long way to … there …

THAT’S HOW YOU STROLL THROUGH YOUR DAYS—playful, in love, doing the thousand silly things that add up to doing nothing. Not thinking much about tomorrow, not thinking at all about the day after. And it’s only at seven in the morning, when—from long habit—her eyes open like two curtains falling back, that Gilgi feels the faint little pangs of a bad conscience before falling asleep again.

Once Olga visits her briefly. Is disturbed and amazed and not at all approving of the transformation in Gilgi’s life. Even though she used to talk quite differently.—

“It’s all well and good, little Gilgi, little pocket-sized Tannhäuser—but why are you doing such stupid things? Living together in this compacted, intense way can only cause trouble in the end. Gilgi—hey—listen to me!” The girl’s eyes are quite glassy. “Surely you must know what you want! If you go on like this, he’ll get sick of you one day—or you of him. You silly girl—first you go on like a petty-bourgeois wife, a dutiful Martha—no man alive can stand the shock of suddenly discovering that he has to be grateful to a woman. Well, and now—you’re sacrificing everything, and of course you feel uncomfortable in your own skin. God, why not lose your inhibitions for once! But then to cut yourself off so completely from all your previous interests!—And one day you’ll realize that it’s impossible for the poor man to do for you what you’re doing
for him, and then you won’t forgive him for your stupidity. Our own mistakes are always the ones which we hold against other people …”

“So—what—should—I—do?—I know, Olga, everything I’m doing is wrong. I can’t see my way clear anymore. Everything in me is confused—don’t know what I want anymore—so what should I do?”

“Don’t make him the foundation of your life, don’t bet everything on one card. How tired you look! You need your work and your independence, you …”

“Stop it, Olga, stop it—my thoughts can’t follow you any further.” She’s standing in the middle of the room, the little one, holding her hands over her ears—so what should I do? Sinks, falls, cries out—“I want someone, someone, someone—don’t belong anywhere—why this one in particular? No idea—but I want—to have him—to keep him—I want, I want, I want …”

“Gilgi,” Olga says, and her voice is bursting with love and the desire to comfort. She kneels beside the little one, puts an arm around her shoulder, speaks words which give encouragement with her frivolous hands, asks questions which give sympathy to the mottled, helpless little face, listens with an attentiveness which unites her to the thin, failing voice—“and you’re together at night and walk beside each other during the day, without a single word that binds you—you only catch words which are soap-bubbles. And there’s something somewhere that I don’t understand—my thoughts hit a wall—and—can—anyone—understand—that—Olga, understand that you’re so ashamed when you remember all the important things? And are afraid of something that you don’t understand and that isn’t a word? And you’re all ripped up, and have
typewriter words and clockwork words and everyday words and don’t want to think about yourself and should think about yourself.—I love him so much, Olga—no, don’t look at me …” And the never-tender little girl Gilgi embraces her friend, moves her lips over her face and neck, her lips are hot … “Silly little girl,” Olga says and has to love Gilgi in the way that everyone who turns their face to the sun and is saturated with light has to love sad tenderness.

“My God, Olga”—Gilgi’s hand gropes over the floor—“that’s a rug, isn’t it? And you’re the sweet, blond, radiant marzipan girl, and I …” she jumps up, her firm, bright Gilgi-voice has returned, “I, Olga, I’ve been stung by a wild hormone—I’m crazy about a man—c’est tout. Nothing unusual, happens in the best families.” She sits down on the windowsill, swings her legs—“he’ll have had enough of me one day—there it is. Oh yes, tell me, Olga, am I imagining it, or has Houbigant’s ochre face-powder really got worse?”

“I think Hudnut’s powder is better. And—Gilgi—I know a lot of people in Berlin, I could get you a job there as a secretary—anyway: you know I have the egotistical habit of giving myself absolution for my own sins by helping the people I like when they happen to need it … there, take some of my powder if yours is no good.” Gilgi turns her face away with a hard little jerk—you’ve become so sensitive, so exposed to every kind word—you have to bust out crying when someone says something nice to you, it’s just because—“I’m full of nerves, marzipan girl—c’est l’amour—ah, Martin! Speak of the Devil … Why do you have to go so soon, Olga?”

“No, kids, you can’t blame me for that. When I’m together with people who are in love—firstly I get sick,
secondly I turn green and yellow with envy … so! For the sake of my complexion … See you!”

Gilgi is lying in bed. She’s asleep. Wakes up: one in the morning. Martin has gone out. Why shouldn’t a man go out by himself sometimes? That’s quite in order. But why hasn’t he got back yet? Surely nothing can have happened to him?… Can it?… Nonsense, he wouldn’t cheat on her. It’s not as if they’re married.

Gilgi can’t stand it in bed anymore. Gets up, walks up and down the room. How can you be so listless and so tired, tired from doing nothing all day? You never used to be this tired. And why can’t you be by yourself anymore? You’ve got a pathological fear of being by yourself. Don’t just walk up and down so pointlessly, now, do something, some work. Gilgi pulls on her dressing gown. Switches on the lights in all the rooms, nothing is too bright. Looks uncared-for, the apartment. Gilgi fetches a broom and some rags and a pail from the kitchen, starts scrubbing and cleaning—in the middle of the night. She works until her arms start to hurt, which makes her feel very cheerful and healthy. And Olga is quite right when she says that not working doesn’t agree with her.

Gilgi goes into Martin’s room—his writing-room, if you like—calling it a workroom would seem just slightly exaggerated, even to Gilgi. There are some pages with writing on them on the desk, Gilgi reads a little of them: they’re about the customs and traditions of South Sea Islanders—“it’ll be quite a long, detailed job,” Martin said once—“and is sure to take at least two years.” Gilgi puts the papers back carefully, pointing this way and that—just
as they had been. Because you read that somewhere once: how upset men get when women with a mania for tidiness attack their writing desks. Except—presumably you’re allowed to pick up what’s on the floor. Bills! A whole bundle. All unpaid. Gilgi holds them with her fingertips, just as if they were poisonous. Which they are, really. She doesn’t want to look at them, or to talk about them with Martin anymore, either, never again. Don’t worry yourself about them—don’t think about them at all. But it’s terrible when you leave the building together and stroll immediately and without speaking to the other side of the street, just so that you don’t have to go past the delicatessen, because … no, that kind of thing is no fun, and no matter how many times you say that it’s a great joke and a big laugh, you’re always lying.

Letters, letters. From all kinds of places. Gilgi puts them into a pile. They’re all lying around quite openly, the letters. He has no secrets from her, does Martin. Funny habit, chucking everything on the floor. Gilgi feels a kind of housewifely pride well up in her when she sees an Amsterdam postmark on one letter. The little Dutch girl! Oh, she knows the story. The poor child is still in love with Martin. No reason why he shouldn’t write her a few friendly words now and then, and of course no reason why he should write her more than that. Gilgi wouldn’t dream of reading the letter, because it’s nothing to do with her, and anyway it’s handwritten. Handwritten letters seem so importunately intimate, so embarrassingly self-revelatory—this one finds its way into the drawer with the others. Right—the floor looks more or less as it should now. There—another letter under the desk. From Zurich—from Martin’s brother—from Christoph. Engagingly clear
typescript.— … and really it’s high time that you finally see reason … — … don’t know what you think you can live on if you take your money now … Gilgi unfolds the letter, it’s definitely worth knowing what Christoph has to say: ah, Martin wanted his money, and Christoph wants to hang on to it. That’s good! It explains why there’s been no talk of going away recently.

Gilgi is sitting on the chaise longue, with her feet propped on the edge of the scrubbing pail, and her left arm wrapped around the handle of the broom. The letter is lying on her lap. She shakes her head, understanding less than ever. Looks five years into the future. A grim vision: Martin in rags, Martin wandering around half- or three-fourths-starved, she wandering with him. Salvation Army, homeless shelter, confidence tricks—unedifying words, particularly unedifying ideas. You ought to make a decision, you ought to … suddenly she feels ice-cold, her teeth start to chatter. Where has Martin got to? It’s better not to look at the clock, it’ll just make you nervous. Goose bumps crawl over her back and arms, the bright lights suddenly hurt her eyes, stabbing at her face. And if Martin didn’t come back … this completely idiotic thought occupies one second, but plunges you immediately into a world of gray and cold, ice and melancholy, and everything looks like the dirty blackish water in the scrubbing pail, and now your left slipper falls into the pail, to top everything off. Gilgi fishes it morosely out of the slimy liquid, limps to the window, puts the slipper on the sill outside: it can dry off there, and if the wind blows it into the front garden Martin will have to fetch it up tomorrow morning.