Pigeons on the Grass by Wolfgang Koeppen

Author:Wolfgang Koeppen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811229197
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2020-09-16T23:48:54+00:00

Lying about gossiping and dreaming shallow, pleasant little dreams in a kind of perpetual doze, happy doze is here again, dreaming stylish F, late 40s, seeks gentleman in secure position, sat the women on state pensions, happy recipients of payments in the event of a spouse’s death, alimony, and allowances, in the Domcafé. Frau Behrend also loved the venue, preferred venue of a like-minded community of ladies, where over coffee and cream one might give oneself over happily to the recollection of marital happiness, happily to the pain of abandonment, happily to the bitterness of disappointment. Carla had yet to secure pension and annuity, and Frau Behrend watched with fear and apprehension as her daughter stepped from the shadow of the Dom, into the bonbon-colored gleam of the traffic lights, into this cozy harbor of life, the softly plashing bay, the reservation of the delightfully cared for: a lost woman. Carla was lost, she was a victim, a victim of the war, she had been cast down in front of a Moloch, it was best to avoid contact with victims, she was lost to her mother, to the respectable circle of other mothers, lost to fatherland and morality, torn away from the parental hearth. But what difference did that make? There was no longer any parental hearth. By the time the house was destroyed by a bomb, the family had already dissolved. Its bonds were asunder. Perhaps the bomb only went to show that they had been loose bonds, the rope of habit, twisted out of chance, misjudgment, error, and folly. Carla was living with a Negro, Frau Behrend in an attic with the yellowing scores of public concerts, and the music master, besotted with his floozy, now serenaded harlots. When she spotted Carla, Frau Behrend looked around in alarm to see if any of her friends, her enemies, her friendly enemies, were sitting anywhere near. She did not like to show herself in public with Carla (who could say? maybe her Negro would show up as well, and then the ladies in the café would witness her disgrace), but still more Frau Behrend feared conversations with Carla in the solitary fastness of her attic. And Carla, who had come to the café looking for Frau Behrend, knowing it to be her mother’s headquarters in the afternoons, with the feeling of having to see her before she went to the clinic to get rid of the undesired fruit of love, love? was it really love? was it not just having someone else, the despair of those thrown into the world, the warmth of body-lying-by-body? and the near/distant being in her body, was it not just the fruit of acquiescence, of familiarity with the man, his embrace, his penetration, the fruit of her little whoredom, the fruit of fear of not being able to make it on her own, which now had conceived a further fear, and wanted to bring that into the world? Carla saw her mother, fish-faced, flounder-headed, coldly

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