We finished our drinks, and she refilled our glasses.
“Have you been living here long?”
“Half a lifetime. Back then, you took what you could get. Now it’s too late. Here I am, and here I’ll stay.”
A convulsive cough shook her whole body. She apologized.
“It is horrible to get old. Old people can’t walk too well anymore, they drool and smack their lips when they eat, they spit and cough … Oh, how I hate it.” She drank deeply from her glass. “All right, that’s better.”
I tried to think of a question to take her mind off her cough and her age. Finally I decided to ask her when she had first met her husband. He was, after all, the object of my visit.
“You really want to know?”
I nodded.
“Don’t ask old people about their lives. Their memory is their life, and the less there was to it, the more they have to tell.”
I said that nevertheless I was interested in her story.
She smiled. “But I have to start from the beginning. It’s no fun for me otherwise.”
She poured us another round and leaned back. Then, believe it or not, she told me her life story.
“In nineteen forty-five, I was seventeen years old. I left home at fifteen to make love to a German officer. Had I been older, I would have guessed that things wouldn’t turn out well with that German, but I was young and thought I was betting on a winner. I hated my parents because they didn’t like him, and were proud to be Poles. I wanted to get out of Warsaw. I wanted to see the world. America, China, Russia. I wanted to live. For me, Warsaw was too provincial, even though I had never been to a bigger city. I wanted to become famous, I dreamed of being a great dancer in Berlin. My parents insisted that I should enter an apprenticeship so I could take over the family tailoring business. Well, then the Russians came, my officer was shot dead, and I had to get by somehow. I was too proud to go back to my parents. Those were hard times. For a bag of potatoes, you’d do just about anything. The young Russian soldiers gave me enough to eat, and I entertained them at night. But even the Russians were poor, and their country was a shambles.
“A girlfriend and I decided to go west, to the Americans. We had heard you could really make some money there. A Polish fellow pawned his wife’s jewelry, bought a car, and drove us the first hundred kilometers in the direction of Berlin. Unfortunately, every couple of kilometers he wanted to be rewarded. We got tired of him and took off. A Russian army patrol picked us up and took us to Berlin. They dropped us off in the American sector. There we realized that the pay wasn’t much better than those old potatoes. The Americans were even worse about paying up than the Russians had been-maybe because their wives were still alive. But we did see our first genuine Negro, and we heard jazz. It was the world we had been looking for.
Then one day I met a dashing sergeant, the son of wealthy parents, and I thought this was my big break. I gave up my wicked ways and devoted myself to him. Days I would drink whiskey and mend his uniform, nights we would fantasize about a ranch in California. Unfortunately, I fell in love with him. I became sentimental and believed him when he said that the letters he received were from his sister. I didn’t even notice his preparations for departure. He left me. I followed him to Cologne and Frankfurt, but finally he got on a plane to America, and I was back on the street. I didn’t know anybody in Frankfurt, but it didn’t take me long to get back into my old profession. I made a lot of money. In nineteen fifty-five I moved to Kronberg, where I worked only for regulars. That was a good time. I could afford everything I wanted, and things could have gone on like that …”
She stuck another cigarette into her holder and inhaled deeply. Then she looked up.
“I warned you. It’s been a long time since anyone shared my vodka with me. What’s your name?”
“Kayankaya, Kemal Kayankaya.”
“I thought so. You’re not a German.” She pointed to herself. “Nina Scheigel, nee Kaszmarek.” She laughed. She filled our glasses and continued her story. “Then one of those crazies showed up again, the kind that wanted to make an honest woman out of me. He was handsomer than the others, and he seemed more decent. He had a wife and children, but it was me he wanted. I was twenty-nine at the time, with another good ten years ahead of me. True, it would have been harder as time went on, and there comes a point when you have to pack it in. I didn’t relish the prospect of walking the streets at forty. I accepted his offer. He bought a small apartment for me, here in Doppenburg, and paid me a decent monthly income. His wife knew about the arrangement. He came to see me almost every day. We took little trips, and I began to share his interest in books. I hadn’t become a great dancer, but I had a carefree life. I did not love my patron, and it was better that way. The locals regarded me as a slut. Everybody knew.
“I used to have coffee with his wife, and at some point I got to know his son, a young man of nineteen. We took an instant shine to each other. For me, he was the hope of something new, and I started dreaming about America again. But one night his father caught us in bed together and kicked me out. He sent his son abroad. I followed him, and we had a wonderful time. When his father found out, he no longer sent money to the son, saying he wouldn’t until I was out of the picture. For a while, we had a romantic time in fleabag hotels. But then he went back and entered the university, as his father wanted.
“I still had the apartment in Doppenburg, so I came back here and tried to forget the young man. I wasn’t able to; I ended up spending more time drinking in the taverns than at home, not least because I would meet one of my lover’s friends there. Fred Scheigel. I had first met him on the secret walks I took with my lover. Fred too was young and good-looking, and he had ambitions to leave and move far away from here. Just like me. We moved in together, and finally we got married. We never emigrated. Fred went to work. Then we opened a grocery store, but it didn’t work. We went bankrupt and stopped dreaming.
“My lover returned to take over his father’s business. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Then his father suddenly died. He married another woman. And so I end up here, with an old idiot of a husband. The Polish slut. My social life consists of an old Russian in Frankfurt. He gets me this vodka. I’m fifty-eight, but I look ten years older, and I’ll die in this hovel.”
She got up for a fresh pack. Then she said, with a cigarette between her lips, “Six months ago, my lover was killed. I wanted to go to the funeral, but they didn’t even let me see his grave.”
Rain was drumming against the windows. It had grown dark, and I could see only her outline, and once in a while her face, in the glow of the tip of her cigarette.
“Bollig was your lover?”
She nodded. She lit another candle.
“And your husband worked for him as a night watchman.”
She produced another bottle of vodka.
“You look like you have a good head for alcohol.”
I held out my glass, and she filled it.
“Yes. Fred was out of work, and I wanted to help him. So I asked Friedrich Bollig to help him out, for old time’s sake. He laughed and asked me why on earth I had shacked up with such a nonentity. It was repulsive, but he was right. He gave Fred a job as a night watchman. I cursed him for it, but I still loved him.”
“Do you know his wife?”
“What do you think … A young woman, after his money. She could have had the money, if she’d let me keep the man.”
“Did he know that?”
“I don’t know. The few times I saw him, I tried to make him understand, but he just got mad, yelled at me, called me names. He claimed that I had destroyed his relationship with his father, even accused me of having caused his death.”
“What did his father die of?”
She stared at me for a moment. Then she leaned back in her chair and laughed.
“You think I killed him?”