The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun

Author:Irmgard Keun
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781590514535
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2011-06-13T21:00:00+00:00

All three of us are sitting in the kitchen. He’s propped up on the chair, the wife is near the stove, and I’m in front of the bed — we’re all standing there — “Frau Brenner, your husband wants to spend one evening just walking around the streets — I’m going to lead him — because he’s going to the home, and there he’s not going to see anything anymore,” I say. He doesn’t say a word, but earlier he was begging me. I have a bouquet of violets pinned to my lapel — it was given to me by a suitor yesterday — and it’s breathing all blue in the kitchen. She’s standing there, his wife — long and thin and with greedy teeth: “I’m going with him.”

Her voice knocks out my violets. “He’s going with me. I’m his wife.”

“I’m going to go with him. I can show him a lot.”

And he’s not saying a word. The battle was going on above his head. All men are cowards. Then his wife starts to scream about all that she’s done for him.

What use is it? He can’t see us — but she smells old and I smell young. I don’t love him, but I’m fighting for our evening because he wants it, I can feel it in my knees. Perhaps because it’s the greatest gift for a woman to be allowed to be good to a man. And nothing else. And so I thank him for allowing me to be good to him, because usually they only love the nasty ones. And it’s much more exhausting to be nasty. That kitchen voice is killing my violets, they are dying right into my skin. And here I’m fighting for his wishes, because he’s tired. “My child.” My voice is trembling: “Dear Frau, whatever belongs to you — just for one evening — one night off — we’ll come back, I beg you.” “What nonsense to be begging! Her kind knows only to scream every cent she’s earned through her yellow teeth. But I know what I want — my child, I’m not afraid — I still have some money. We can go anywhere we want.”

“It’s your choice,” screams the Yellow Teeth. Poor men, they always have to choose — Hindenburg — women — communists — women. “Listen Frau, just one evening and only for three hours — there’ll be enough hours left for you — so many.” Her hands with their rusty skin are dangling in front of me. “Yes,” she says.

So let’s go — we leave — crisscrossing Berlin — we take taxis — his skin smells like black and white birch trees, that’s how happy he is — because those don’t smell — you can only see them, but he can’t — that’s why he smells like them.

“It’s hard carrying a dead thing around with you,” he says. True. My uncle once had to carry a dead body up from the river at night and he told me: “Dead bodies are heavy.

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