The Eternal Philistine by Odon Von Horvath Read Free Book Online

gentlemen because she only earned 110 marks a month, had just an average figure and an average face—it being neither unpleasant nor especially pretty, just decent. She worked in the office of a rental car agency, but at best could afford a bicycle on an installment plan. She was permitted to ride on the back of a motorcycle every once in a while, but something was often expected of her in return. Despite everything, she was quite sweet-tempered and did not shut herself off to men. But she would only ever go out with one guy at a time—experience had taught her that much. Often she did not exactly love this one particular guy, but she took comfort in being able to sit next to him in the Schellingsalon or elsewhere. She did not want to yearn for anything, but if she ended up doing it anyway, everything seemed insipid to her. She would rarely speak; she only ever listened to what the gentlemen were saying amongst each other. Then she secretly made fun of them because, after all, the gentlemen didnot actually have anything to say. These gentlemen would rarely speak to her, and if they did it was usually only when they felt the urge to do it. During the first few sentences she would often be spiteful and malicious, but then she soon let herself go again. She was indifferent to practically everything in her life, and it had to be like that, otherwise she would not have been able to bear it. It was only when she was feeling ill that she would think about herself more intensely.
    At one point she went out with a gentleman by the name of Fritz for well over a year. Toward the end of October she said, “If I got pregnant right now it’d be the biggest disaster.” She was shocked by her words.
    “Why are you crying?” asked Fritz. “I don’t like it when you cry. All Saints’ Day falls on a Saturday this year, so there’s an extra day off and we can take a hike in the mountains.” And then he explained to her that all the physical stress during the climb down would, as is generally known, see to it that she didn’t get pregnant.
    So she climbed with Fritz up the west side of the Wasserkarspitze, which stands 2,037 meters above yonder sea. It was already night when they reached the summit, but up above there were stars in the sky. There was a fog in the valley below; it slowly wafted up toward them. Everything in the world was very quiet, and then Anna said, “The fog looks like it has all the unborn souls flying around in it.” But Fritz did not respond to this tone.
    Ever since this hike in the mountains she had had a sickly pallor. She never really fully recovered and every so often her womb area hurt her like crazy. But she did not hold it against any of the gentlemen; she just had a strong constitution. There are people out there that you just can’t kill. And so she lived happily ever after.
    So in mid-September she was sitting next to Kobler in the Schellingsalon. She ordered just a small glass of dark beer. She had already eaten her supper, two little rolls of bread and butter, at the rental car company because that night, by way of exception, she had to work until nine o’clock. On average, she would have to do this, by way of exception, four times a week. Of course she was not paid for working overtime because after all, if she wanted to be jobless, she had the right to quit on the first of every month.
    “Give me a bit of your potato salad,” she said suddenly because, suddenly, she just had to eat something else.
    “Sure,” said Kobler, at once feeling as though he should be ashamed of himself for going to Barcelona.
    “It’s going to be very exhausting,” he said.
    “So I guess that means there’s nothing doing tonight,” she said.
    “Right,” he said.

CHAPTER 8
    THE EXPRESS TRAIN THAT WAS TO TAKE KOBLER across the German border departed punctually because the gentleman with the red uniform cap raised his baton punctually. “Now that’s German punctuality for you,” he heard somebody say in a