Her former neighbours are in attendance. They are curious and lacking compassion. It is possible they are vindictive. Naïve people often are. Some share the destiny of the accused. Morphine lurks in their eyes. Their hands shake. Do they feel they have something in common? Are they suffering with her? Are they looking into their own future? I watch them eating their sandwiches. Perhaps one can see one’s destiny accomplished before one’s very eyes and still feel hungry. Men are there, both as witnesses and onlookers. Their constitution survived her opium. An army officer speaks. He is as calm and objective as a lawyer. He is not at all excited. But he too was one of her victims. His constitution withstood the opium. He met the girl on Potsdamer Platz. She wasn’t the first, nor the last. These are the women he crosses paths with. He doesn’t become her destiny, nor she his. They are his episodes, and luckily he too is just an episode. He wanders along on the fringes of danger, and nibbles at them.
Rose Gentschow is still hoping for reprieve. But her small, fogged brain is not equal to the sharpness of the judge. He asks: “How did you come to steal?” She answers: “I didn’t know what I was doing. I had already taken a lot of morphine.” The judge: “Were you stealing on the orders of your friend?” She, swiftly espying possible salvation: “Yes, yes!” The judge: “Then how can you claim not to have known what you were doing?” She is baffled by the logic. From a world of inebriation and thoughtless exhaustion, she suddenly finds herself in a sphere of implacable reason. Dazzled by the luminosity of logic, she leans back, closing her eyes. She loses herself, she is lost.
She can go on no longer. The world is sinking. She opens her eyes once more. Then she lapses into a kindly oblivion.
Prager Tagblatt, 10 April 1924
17. Two Gypsy Girls
The sun had an unusual, animating shine, it was as brisk as early morning, and as warm as noon, and lots of people were hurrying along the busy street. They were coming out of department stores carrying parcels, they were bustling about, dressed in bright and cheery clothes, as though they were on their way to a great party. The screaking trams, the tooting cars, the clattering buses were creating a joyful tumult. The whole city felt as cheerful as an adult become childish with joy.
Just then two young gypsy girls came along.
They were very brown and were wearing bright colourful clothes, red blouses and blue and white floral skirts, red ribbons in their hair and big yellow amber necklaces at their throats. On their feet they had red sandals. They had suddenly sprung up from somewhere, maybe they had come out of a shop. Even in their haste, the people stepped aside, so that they walked into an unoccupied space, and the looks that were sent their way were in equal part astonished and suspicious. They had little childish faces, pointy chins on which smiling dimples barely managed to find room, and brimming violet eyes. (Even their whites had a bluish shimmer.) Their blouses seemed to be casually unbuttoned, and yet were chastely closed, and the stout amber necklaces made their slender throats look even nobler, narrower, aristocratic. Under the flowing garments one sensed they were well-grown.
The two young gypsy girls were walking slowly, casually, a little taken aback, a little confused by the sunny throng, like a pair of alarmed young queens. Even so, their sandals barely brushed the paving stones; the teetering steps of young ladies in heels were heavier and stayed longer on the ground, even though they were in a hurry. The young gypsies wanted to cross the main road, but they were afraid of the vehicles that clattered by so merrily and dangerously to life and limb. Three times they walked out into the middle of the road, only to flee back to the pavement like alarmed colourful birds. A great panic came over their pretty faces. People laughed a little.
So I went up to the gypsies, stepped between them, took them by the arm, and led them across, feeling how they trembled.
When I got to the other side, I tipped my hat to them and let them go their ways.
A gentleman with a large blond moustache that went out into a couple of butchers’ hooks threw me an angry look from his sky-blue eyes, full of contempt and menace and inexpressible rage.
The two young gypsy girls didn’t turn back, they walked on. A puff of wind blew out their skirts, and they looked like two wandering flags.
Frankfurter Zeitung, 12 May 1924
18. Grock
Grock is in Berlin. Grock, the great clown.
First of all a bespectacled gentleman in dinner jacket walks on stage. He is a violinist, a virtuoso, a ten a penny virtuoso, a civilized being, there is nothing out of the ordinary about him. As he holds the violin under his chin, lifts the bow with a graceful and practised movement and begins to play, it is all of exemplary mediocrity, unobtrusive and routine.
Then the right wall lifts quietly, and very carefully, sheepishly, and with the modest air of someone who has no business being there, a very striking creature walks onto the stage in baggy grey tails, falling too far over the baggy grey trousers, and with a round grey bowler hat on his head. The bulging eyes, which from the shape of them must be exceedingly stupid, though they have a sort of unnatural cunning, carefully test the atmosphere. A long, very soft and well-behaved chin hangs sadly down, resigned, disappointed a thousand times over, ten thousand times over, but still with a little optimism. No doubt about it: this is Grock.
Grock is carrying a large suitcase. It contains a minuscule violin. The gentleman in the dinner jacket is vastly surprised. Grock is beginning to feel at home. Oh, it’s so nice being here! What a kindly gentleman! Now Grock will play you something. He settles himself on the chair arm, with his big, soft, yellow shoes on the seat, and plays very nobly, very movingly, and with plenty of feeling, proper grown-up notes on his tiny violin.
Next he is to accompany the gentleman at the piano. But first he has to change. He returns in a set of tight black tails, with pitifully bowed, wavy legs in tight, implacably form-hugging trousers. And now begins the fight against life, the brutal unremitting struggle against the resistance of everything in the world, the wickedness and unfittedness of things, the grotesque illogic of ordinary circumstance. The piano is too far from the stooclass="underline" he needs to move it. The lid is open: if he tries to put his top hat on it, it will fall to the floor. It’s impossible to hit the correct notes, because he is wearing thick white gloves. So he had better take them off. How is a man to come to such a conclusion unaided? Luckily, he has his sensible friend to tell him.
Grock takes off his gloves and rolls them up. They look like an egg. An egg! Did you ever?! An extremely amusing scene surfaces in Grock’s memory: a man juggling with eggs. A conjuror. Just at that moment juggling seems more important than music making. A pair of white gloves in the guise of an egg leaves Grock with no option. It takes quite some time. Finally the gentleman calls him back to the piano.
Grock has a wonderful, round, almost cylindrical mouth organ. It’s capable of sounding like an organ. Because of course it is a terribly dignified, positively sacred object. But when you hold it in your hands, sometimes it plays itself. It makes singular very high squeaky sounds. Grock is afraid of these sounds that seem to leap of their own accord from the interior of the instrument, exuberant little beasts, unable to stand their long imprisonment. Grock leaps away. He still has the mouth organ. A little note squirts out. Grock turns round. There is a titanic battle between the man’s will, his fingers and the obstinate instrument.
Several times this fight reaches a sort of climax: when Grock starts to look for his cufflinks way past his elbow, where a normal person gets his vaccination; when Grock takes the violin in his right hand, the bow in his left, and is unable to play; when Grock tosses the bow high up in the air and is unable to catch it. Then he goes behind a partition to practise. Comes out, throws the bow in the air and catches it. A minute passes. Then Grock remembers he has pulled off his difficult trick, and he cheers, a cheer that is half grunt, half whoop. It is the great joy of an adorable idiot.