Free Panorama by H. G. Adler Page B

he’s also glad, because Bubi can’t stand her and says a proper young man doesn’t need any such thing, he’d rather have a butler to wait on him. But butlers don’t exist anymore, because there are no more men available for work, and even in the streetcar there are now female conductors who wear uniforms exactly like male conductors, and have a proper badge and wear a gray jacket like men, though they don’t wear pants, the grandmother saying, “It’s a scandal that they run around like that. In my day one would never have let a woman be gawked at on the street.” But Aunt Gusti says it’s great for the women, there’s no reason for them to be ashamed, and the mother also thinks that the women are just fine. She bemoans the fact of how proper her parents were, otherwise she would have studied medicine, and then Georg Diamant and Herr Machleidt would still be alive, and the mother would be of much greater use in the hospital, for she would then be an orthopedic doctor, but her good father had only allowed her to study to be a good nurse and a certified gymnastics teacher and masseuse, because those were female occupations, though Aunt Betti says, “A proper woman belongs at home. It’s scandalous that women must do everything these days, for the man is the breadwinner of the family. A real woman belongs at the stove. The war is to blame. My Paul would never have allowed during normal times that I should slave away in a store, and do it all on my own, though I do it because Oskar means so much to me.” Aunt Gusti then adds, “I have no problem with women entering any profession and not just remaining done-up dolls who don’t know how to do anything. You can trudge through life like Frau Machleidt, but how much better it would go for her if someone had taught her how to properly cut cloth. Then she wouldn’t have to go from house to house looking for any work she can find.… She could have her own dress salon.” Aunt Betti replies, “You wouldn’t talk so if you had married!” This really upsets Aunt Gusti, and the mother thinks it’s all terrible talk anddoesn’t understand why Aunt Betti has to hurt Aunt Gusti so, but the father has had enough and laughs and says something in partial Czech, which no one understands: “zum Pukken prasken.”
    Then everyone plays tarot, including the father, the grandmother, and the aunts, but not the mother, she doesn’t like cards that much, and the father also says that she plays so badly that she can’t tell the king from the queen. Josef would indeed like to play as well, but that’s not allowed when everyone is there, they want to play themselves, and so they say that tarot is not a game for children, who have only two card games they can play, Black Peter and Quartet. Josef doesn’t have any Black Peter cards, and whenever Bubi and other children come over they play Black Peter with tarot cards, which means he uses The Fool for Black Peter, but he has only three quartets—a flower quartet, a composer’s quartet, and then one that is really beautiful, which is called The Age of Greatness. On it are the emperors of Austria and Germany, as well as the king of Bulgaria and the sultan, this quartet being called The State Leaders of the Middle Countries, though there are also enemy leaders, namely the czar of Russia, the kings of England and Italy, and the president of France, in addition to all the heroes, lots of archdukes and princes, field marshals and generals, admirals, U-boat commanders and fighter pilots, all the friendly ones adorned with flags and oak leaves, while all the enemies have loads of weapons, Bubi liking the quartet so much that his mother gave him one as well for his birthday, which pleased him no end.
    Fräulein Jedlitschka is now gone, and she didn’t take anything of Josef’s, but instead everything went smoothly as through thick tears she said goodbye to the mother, whom she said she would never forget, she was so grateful, it was the