“Did you hear what we were saying?”
“All women lie,” Renée says in her angel’s voice. “When they don’t they’re not worth bothering about”
“Amen,” the dog trainer replies.
Gerda smooths back her hair. “I’m through here. Wait till I change.”
She goes to a door marked Dressing Room. Ren£e looks after her. “She’s pretty,” she remarks impartially. “Look how she carries herself. She walks properly, and that’s the most important thing in a woman. Bottom in, not out. Acrobats learn how.”
“I heard that once before,” I say. “From a connoisseur of women and granite. How do you walk properly?”
“When you feel as if you were holding a five-mark piece with your tail—and then forget about it.”
I try to picture that and fail. It has been too long since I have seen a five-mark piece. But I know a woman who can yank a fair-sized nail out of the wall that way. She is Frau Beckmann, the girl friend of Karl Brill, the shoemaker. She’s a powerful woman, made of iron. Karl Brill has won many a bet on her, and I myself have had an opportunity to admire her act. A nail is driven into the workshop wall, not too deep, of course, but deep enough so that it would take a good jerk by hand to pull it out. Then Karl goes to awaken Frau Beckmann. She appears among the drinkers in the shop wearing a light dressing gown, sober, serious, and matter-of-fact. A little cotton is wound around the head of the nail so she won’t hurt herself, then Frau Beckmann takes up her position behind a low screen with her back to the wall, leaning slightly forward, her dressing gown discreetly wrapped around her, her hands resting on the screen. She maneuvers a little to get hold of the nail with her hams, suddenly tenses, straightens up, then relaxes—and the nail falls to the floor. Usually a little chalk trickles after it. Without a word or any sign of triumph Frau Beckmann turns around, disappears up the stairs, and Karl Brill collects the bets from his astounded drinking companions. It is strictly a sporting event; no one looks upon Frau Beckmann’s performance from any but a purely professional point of view. And no one ventures a loose word about it. She would beat his head in. She is as strong as a giant; the two lady wrestlers are anemic children by comparison.
“Well, make Gerda happy,” Renée says laconically. “For two weeks. Simple, isn’t it?”
I stand there, somewhat embarrassed. The vade mecum for high society assuredly contains no rules for such a situation. Fortunately Willy appears. He is elegantly dressed and has a Borsalino on the side of his head; nevertheless, he looks like a cement block draped with artificial flowers. With a courtly gesture he kisses Renée’s hand, then reaches in his pocket and brings out a small jewel box. “For the most fascinating woman in Werdenbrück,” he announces with a bow.
Renée emits a small, soprano scream and looks at Willy incredulously. Then she opens the box. A gold ring set with an amethyst sparkles up at her. She puts it on the middle finger of her left hand, stares at it in rapture and then throws her arms around Willy. Willy stands there very proud and smiling, listening to the trills and the bass; in her excitement Renée can’t keep control of them. “Willy!” she chirps, and then thunders, “I am so happy!”
Gerda comes out of the dressing room in a bathrobe. She has heard the scream and wants to know what’s happening. “Get ready, children,” Willy says. “We’ll be on our way.”
The two girls disappear. “Couldn’t you have given Renée the ring later on when you were alone, you show-off?” I ask. “What am I to do now about Gerda?”
Willy breaks into good-natured laughter. “Damn it all, I never thought about that! What can we do? Come along and have dinner with us.”
“So that all four of us can spend our time staring at Renée’s amethyst? Not on your life.”
“Listen to me,” Willy says. “Things are not the same with Renée and me as with Gerda and you. I am serious. Believe it or not, I’m crazy about Renée. Seriously crazy. She’s a magnificent creature!”
We sit down in two old cane chairs by the wall. The white spitzes are now practicing walking on their front legs. “Imagine,” Willy explains. “It’s her voice that drives me crazy. At night it’s fabulous. As though you have two different women. First a tender one and a minute later a fishwife. And it goes farther than that. When it’s dark and she cuts loose with that drill sergeant’s voice of hers, cold shivers run up my back. It’s damned odd. I’m not a pansy, but sometimes I feel as if I were defiling a general or that bastard Sergeant Flümer, who used to make life miserable for us when we were recruits. It’s only for an instant and then everything’s straight again, but—you understand what I mean?”
“More or less.”
“All right, so she has me hooked. I want her to stay here. I’m going to fix up a little home for her.”
“Do you think she’ll give up her profession?”
“She doesn’t need to. Once in a while she can accept an engagement. I’ll go with her. My business is movable.”
“Why don’t you marry her? You’re rich enough.”
“Marriage is something else again,” Willy explains. “How can you marry a woman who’s capable at any minute of roaring at you like a general? You can’t help jumping to attention when that happens unexpectedly; that’s something in our blood. No, someday I’ll marry a calm plump little thing who is a first-class cook. Renée, my boy, is the typical mistress.”
I look with admiration at this man of the world. He smiles in a superior fashion. The Breviary of Good Manners is superfluous for him. I forego wisecracks. Wit wears thin against someone able to give amethyst rings. The lady wrestlers get up lazily and try a couple of holds. Willy looks at them with interest. “Capital women,” he whispers to me like a first lieutenant of the Kaiser’s time.
“What’s the matter with you? Attention! Eyes right!” a resonant voice roars behind us.
Willy jumps. It is Renée, exhibiting her ring and smiling. “See now what I mean?” Willy asks.
I see it all right. The two leave. Outside, Willy’s car is waiting, the red town car with leather upholstery. I’m glad Gerda is taking longer to dress. At least she won’t see that car. I wonder what I can offer her tonight. The only thing I have besides the breviary for men of the world is tickets for Eduard Knobloch’s restaurant—and they unfortunately aren’t valid in the evening. I decide to try them, nevertheless, and to pretend to Eduard that they are the last two.
Gerda comes in. “Do you know what I’d like, my pet?” she says before I can open my mouth. “Let’s go into the country for a while. We’ll take a streetcar. I want to go for a walk.”
I stare at her, not trusting my ears. A walk in the country—exactly what Erna, that poison-tongued serpent, reproached me for. Has she mentioned it to Gerda? She would be quite capable of it.
“I thought we might go to the Walhalla,” I say cautiously and mistrustfully. “They have magnificent food there.”
Gerda shakes her head. “Why? It’s much too nice for that. I made some potato salad this afternoon. Here!” She holds up a package. “We’ll eat it in the country, and we can buy sausages and beer to go with it. All right?”
I nod silently, more suspicious than ever. Erna’s reproach about the seltzer water, sausage, beer, and cheap wine of no vintage still sticks in my mind. “I have to be back at nine in that stinking hole, the Red Mill,” Gerda explains.
Stinking hole?, I stare at Gerda once more. But her eyes are clear and innocent, with no trace of irony. And suddenly I understand! What’s paradise for Erna is nothing but a place of employment for Gerda! She hates the dive that Erna loves. Rescued, I think. Thank God! The Red Mill with its fantastic prices sinks out of my mind like Gaston Munch as the ghost in Hamlet disappearing through the trap door at the city theater. Instead, the vision of priceless quiet days with sandwiches and homemade potato salad rises before me! The simple life! Earthly love! Peace of soul! At last! Sauerkraut, if you like, but sauerkraut, too, can be magnificent! With pineapple, for example, cooked in champagne. To be sure, I’ve never eaten it that way, but Eduard Knobloch says it’s a dish fit for reigning kings and poets.