Irmgard Keun

Gilgi typifies the independent young woman of the Twenties. She throws in her job as secretary in order to escape her parents’ home, and take her life in her own hands. En route to independence, she meets the writer, Martin, and decides to move in with him. Here, Martin undertakes an evening stroll through Cologne.

"Martin Bruck wanders through the streets. Shitty weather, wet and sticky. Look up, dirty grey clouds – look down, blackish, slippery, damp paving stones. The lights on the Hohenzollernring scowl into the fog. Urban’s Hostelries – Café Vienna. Jazz tunes spill out in little waves as far as the shivering doormen in the entrances. Within, a few provincial types revel in boredom on red plush chairs. At the slightest provocation, the waiters will tell you how bad business is, a couple huff out of the cafe because coffee is served only in pots. A-1 waitstaff have already sunk so far that their first class attentiveness, generally reserved for fur-coated patrons, is lavished on plain gabardine guests. Only one adorable little cigarette boy continues to represent the inflexibly arrogant Ku-damm aspirations of the Cologne Ringstraße.

Martin finishes his coffee. Lays out a two-mark piece on the table for the waiter, declines, as ever, to be paid out the piddling change of 80 pfennigs. Excitedly, the waiter accompanies the eccentric guest out on to the pavement, persists in taking him for an American, promises him – in desperate urge to give quo for his quid – better weather next week, and recommends Dahmen’s Bus Tours of the city.

Martin turns down Ehrenstraße. The housewives’ El Dorado. Shop cheek by jowl with shop. Butchers creatively light up their displays. Between bleeding hunks of meat pale bunches of narcissi wonder what they’ve done wrong. Fluffy little bunnies stare reproachfully out of their dead glass eyes. From fishmongers’ shops silver-bellied pike and haddock unleash a vengeful stench. Ladies with shopping nets bustle past the windows, as greedy for spoils as Sioux Indians on the warpath. Pale, neglected women pull bedraggled children after them, poor unemployed men try to fill their bellies from the warm smell of bakeries. Tauber’s radiophonic shop releases something terribly sad from the Tsarevitch free to air into the crowded street... at the dead of night...

After a while, Ehrenstraße turns into Breitestraße. Just as you can have a poor Mr. Rich and a short Mr. Large – well, Breitestraße is narrow. Martin is startled to see people – oppressed and oppressive streams of them – who, in the midst of the frenzied thrusting and pushing of shoppers, appear to be strolling, as if they were taking the waters in Wiesbaden or Karlsbad. Köln am Rhein, you beautiful little town – Martin shivers. His hands and face are wet from the rain. Sad town. Sad country. Every mouth that opens breathes out bad temper and joylessness into the air. Tired eyes, glum faces. Chilled and dejected, Martin lands in a portside bar, runs his hand over the honest plank table. Something homely about it, the cracked, whiskey-sodden piece. He fills his lungs: it smells the way all portside bars smell anywhere in the world: of cheap booze and rough tobacco and moving off tomorrow. You wouldn’t know you were in Cologne, or in Germany. Which you’d like to forget anyway, except it seemed to be beyond you. In all your life you haven’t felt so painfully solitary, abandoned, and generally superfluous. Whether you were speaking to waiters, cleaning ladies, tram conductors, taxi-drivers, booksellers, barmen, or shop-girls – every third word was trouble. Everyone dissatisfied, everyone groaning. Sorry country, where you draw in pessimism with every breath you take. Where loafing and idling can’t be a pleasure, only a torment. Scrimping and saving is no pleasure either, you thought you were more modest in your habits than it seems you are.”