Free Gilgi by Irmgard Keun Page B

succeed with both.
    The pale woman walks along beside Gilgi: “When do you start the job?”
    “Right after Ash Wednesday.”
    The pale woman sighs. “How I envy you! The firm where I worked went bust five months ago, and since then I haven’t found anything else.”
    “But you’re getting unemployment benefits, aren’t you?”
    The pale woman grimaces: “Which doesn’t mean much! Anyway, it runs out next month, then they’ll put me on emergency relief.”
    They stand beside each other at the streetcar stop without speaking. Gilgi feels uncomfortable. Perhaps the decent thing would be to give up the job now, so that the pale woman could have it. What kind of idea is that? Gilgi bites her lips. She has to make sure that she gets ahead—every man for himself—where would you end up if you gave in to every flabby prompting of sympathy?
    The streetcar comes. They get on. The pale woman sits down next to Gilgi: “So you worked, just so that you had something to eat and drink and a place to sleep, and you thought that life couldn’t ever be more miserable, but suddenly it’s even more miserable, and there’s nothing so bad that it couldn’t get even worse—you know that now, like it’s your only consolation.”
    “For two!” Gilgi says to the conductor, holding out her multi-ticket. And to the pale woman: “Had just one more trip left on it.” The pale woman nods, quite satisfied. The thought that she had paid car-fare for nothing was what had been getting to her the most. Now at least she’s having one free trip. Gilgi squints at her neighbor: patches on her dark overcoat have been rubbed bare—maybe you could, maybe you should … Nonsense! She had an equal chance, didn’t she? Did she? Did she really? With her wrinkled, old face, her sloppy posture, with her flat, dead eyes and herhorrible clothes??? Who’ll give her a job now? She’s made a mess of her life, but when she was starting out, at least, she had an equal chance. Or maybe she didn’t? Gilgi becomes less sure. The fact that people begin life with most unequal chances is not entirely clear for a moment—but then it’s undeniable. A gross injustice, Gilgi decides. And if it was up to her … but it’s not up to her, and she has to accept that. When the streetcar reaches the cathedral the pale woman stands up, forgets to say goodbye to Gilgi, and shuffles on her bandy legs to the exit.
    When Gilgi gets home, her two cousins fall upon her. Young Gerda is back in the Pierrot costume, and Young Irene in the pixie one.—“Hurry, hurry, hurry, Gilgi, we’re leaving in a minute.” Then Gilgi hears a scream from her parents’ bedroom, and rushes in: Frau Kron has dropped a bottle of hair lotion—“it was still almost full, an’ it cost three-fifty.” She wrings her hands, standing there like Cologne’s and Hamburg’s answer to Niobe, a white paper chrysanthemum on her gray silk dress, a cute little red cracker-shaped hat on her freshly permed hair, a pained expression on her face. “I’ll never buy that brand again!” No-one has ever been able to accuse Frau Kron of being a logical thinker. Gilgi gathers up the fragments of glass. Herr Kron, at the wash-stand, proclaims the Germanic folk-wisdom (which always bears repeating) that broken glass brings good luck! And devotes himself once more to pushing his canary-yellow tie through the matchbox cover which secures it when he dresses for Carnival. Aunt Hetty sweeps in: a most dramatic shawl around her square shoulders, three red poppies behind her ear—Carmen after a successful weight-loss program. “God, Gilgi isn’t ready yet!”
    Gilgi runs into her room. Saturday of Carnival—the beginning of Carnival. The whole family is going to a masked ball. Gilgi dresses in very short blue velvet trousers, a white silk blouse with a blue tie, black patent-leather pumps. All right, ready. Gloomily, she powders her bare legs. Ach, she has absolutely no desire to go along, absolutely none.