Read Online The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun - Free Book Online Page B

fabulous city.
    Later on, I’ll be going to a jockey bar with a white-slave trader type that I don’t care about otherwise. But this way, I’ll get introduced to the kind of environment that will open up some opportunities for me. Tilli also thinks that I should go. Right now I’m on
Tauentzien
at
Zunztz
, which is a café but without music, but cheap — and with lots of hectic people like swirling dust, so you can tell that something’s going on in the world. I’m wearing my fur and am having an effect. Across the street is the Memorial Church that nobody can get into, because of the cars all around it, but it’s an important monument, but Tilli says it’s just holding up traffic.
    Tonight I’m going to write everything down in order in my book, because there’s so much material that’s accumulated in me. So Therese helped me skip town that night. I was trembling all over and full of fear and expectation and joy, because everything would be new now and full of excitement and adventure. And she also went to my mother to fill her in and told her that I would pay back both her and Therese handsomely, if it all worked out. And I know that my mother can keep a secret, which is amazing because she’s over 50, but hasn’t forgotten what it used to be like for her. But they can’t send me any clothes. That would be too dangerous — and so I’ve got nothing except for one shirt which I wash in the morningand then I stay in bed until it’s dry. And I need shoes and many many other things. But it’ll come. I also can’t write to Therese because of the police who are undoubtedly looking for me — because I know the Ellmanns, how tenacious she is and how she enjoys making criminals out of people.
    I don’t care if she’s in trouble because of me, because she was the one who cooked and ate Rosalie, which was our cat — a sweet creature with a silky purr and fur like white velvet clouds with ink spots. She used to lie on my feet at night and keep them warm — now I have to cry — I ordered a piece of cake for myself, Dutch kirsch, and now I can’t eat it because I’m full of grief at the thought of Rosalie. But I took a doggy bag. And she had disappeared all of a sudden, without coming back, which she never did, because she was used to me. And I was standing at the window calling: “Rosalie” at night and into the gutters. I felt so sad that she was gone, not only because she kept me warm, not only my feet. And for something that’s so small and so soft and helpless that you can pick it up with your two hands, you have to be full of love for that. And the next Sunday, I go upstairs to the Ellmanns to retrieve the celery slicer that she had borrowed from us, the bitch, because she won’t ever buy anything that she can borrow from someone else. They were just sitting down for dinner — that unkempt Herr Ellmann, who looks like a missionary with those hypocritical eyes,sitting on an island unshaven and eating poor black people in order to convert them. His yellow teeth were sticking out of his mouth, that’s how greedy he looked. And there was a platter on the table with fried meat on it — and I recognized the shape of Rosalie’s body. Also, I could tell because of Frau Ellmann’s behavior and her beady eyes. So I told her straight out, and she’s lying in a way that I know; I’m telling the truth. And I break into tears in all my grief and smash the celery chopper into her face so her nose starts to bleed and her eye gets all black and blue. Which wasn’t nearly enough, because Ellmann has work and they had enough to eat and didn’t go hungry and so they didn’t need Rosalie. My mother has been worse off many times, but we never would have dreamed of frying Rosalie, because she was a pet with human instincts — and that you shouldn’t eat. And that’s one reason I’m keeping the fur. Now I’m all worked up from those memories.
    And I was on the road all night. One man gave me three oranges and