Gilgi by Irmgard Keun Read Free Book Online Page A

neglected beneath the table.
    A girl comes out from behind the bar, and asks Gilgi more or less pleasantly what she’d like. “Cup of coffee.” They don’t serve it. The cheapest thing she can order is port wine. Fine, port wine. It’s terrible how much money she’s spending today! She starts to feel uneasy, what’s she supposed to do here while she’s waiting? Three more hours! She digs some sandwiches out of her bag and starts to eat, less from hunger than from boredom. Pit’s playing the Song of the Pigeon … How did you, pigeon, pigeon, pigeon … the two traveling salesmen are singing along, the waitress is singing too. One of the lanterns expires from enthusiasm, a breath of hometown pride wafts through the room.
    You should be in your loft / Our kitchen’s not for you: Get lost! / Take off! Take off! Take off!… Gilgi is writing in a little notebook. Income—Expenditures. You have to be orderly. Especially in financial matters. “Like a sweet little shopkeeper!” Olga says on those occasions when Gilgi ponders for a half-hour about a fifty-pfennig purchase she can’t remember. Olga never has a clue what she’s spent her money on. She has no system, and no ability to organizeone. Whenever Gilgi thinks of Olga’s finances, she feels faint. And whenever she hears Olga talking about money, she feels downright seasick. Income—Expenditures.
    Maria, Maria, listen—do!
    That Engelbert’s not the man for you …
    Bang! The door is thrown open, a multi-colored being sweeps in, alights next to Gilgi’s table: “You don’ mind, do you, Frollein?” and calls over to the bar: “Gimme a schnapps and five Ova cigarettes!”
    The multi-colored being looks depressed. Gilgi offers it a cigarette. She packs her notebook away in her bag, chews on her sandwich and looks over the bright little hooker. Who sighs: “Nothin’ happenin’,” and Gilgi doesn’t quite know if that means in general, or only in the bar.
    “How did you end up here?” Gilgi doesn’t answer. The hooker is wearing a coral necklace, her knitted jacket is mended neatly at the elbows—could she have done it herself?—she’s put lots of polish on her broad, grubby fingernails, and she has no face, just as Fräulein Täschler had no face.
    Maria, Maria, listen—do … What are these people to me, Gilgi thinks. Everyone is in the place where they belong. If their lives end up in the crapper, it’s their own fault. “God, I almos’ forgot again,” the hooker laughs, “I was goin’ to put my elbow on the table again, but that always ruins the mend in my jacket.” She places her arms carefully on the table, like a well-behaved child in Sunday School. “ ’S cold outside,” she says.
    Gilgi nods. “D’you want a sandwich?” she asks, friendly but uncertain, and points to the packet in front of her.
    “God, if you’ve got enough of ’em.” The hooker takes one, and Gilgi puts the next one in front of her, too, the hooker touched it with her finger, and Gilgi can’t bear that. A girl as pretty as you / Deserves a real Prince Charm-ing too …
    The hooker chews, which she can only do on the left side, she has a big hole in a molar on her right. “Haven’ been able to get it done yet, yeah, it’s a lousy job I’ve got.”
    “So why’d you choose it?” Gilgi asks.
    “I didn’ actually choose it.”
    “So find a better one now.” Gilgi feels vaguely that a girl who mends her knitted jacket neatly doesn’t have to earn her living on the street. The hooker shrugs her shoulders: “God, I’m in it now, what’m I supposed to do?” Gilgi can’t find an answer to that. Just don’t stick your nose so high in the air, just don’t always think it’s so completely your own doing if you’re something better. Say the Krons hadn’t adopted her, say she’d been brought up by Täschler, back there in Thieboldstrasse, say she—better not to think about it at all — — —
    “ ’Lo, Gilgi.” Pit gives her his