Read Gilgi for Free Online Page B

mother an’ daughter, the old guy was dead. They had tons of money, tons, I’m tellin’ you! An’ the daughter was a nice girl, an’ when she was about twenny, she got involved with a guy, he was nothin’ an’ had nothin’, an’ the old girl was against him, ’cos she wanted the daughter to marry someone with a title, Count or Doctor or somethin’ like that. Anyway, the guy disappeared after a while, an’ everythin’ would’ve been alright, but suddenly it turns out that she’s five months gone. You should’ve seen the old girl, the way she kept her chin up an’ got to work. Then one fine day she came to me—I was livin’ all by myself in a room in Weyerstrasse. I didn’ have any relatives, an’ she knew that, an’ it suited her jus’ fine. So she said that there was this problem with her daughter, an’ it had to be fixed, her future’d be ruined if anyone found out, an’ it wouldn’ matter so much with me, the men of our class didn’ care if a girl had a child. An’ she’d manage things so that afterwards the child’d be mine, an’ I was to get ten thousand marks. Think of that—ten thousand marks, Frollein! An’ she’d arrange everythin’. Well, I’d’ve done lots of things for a hundred marks, though not everythin’, not by a long way, but for ten thousand marks! When I heard that, I couldn’ believe my ears. An’ then the old girl arranged everythin’. She rented an apartment in Bayenthal, in a really out-of-the-way part,an’ the Frollein an’ I lived there for the last three months. An’ the Frollein had to stay indoors all the time, she was never ever allowed to go outside. I could go out sometimes, but then the old girl made me stuff a sofa cushion up the front of my dress, so that the people in the place’d all think I was havin’ a little visitor soon. The old girl’d thought of everythin’. An’ the Frollein, she said nothin’ at all, she was jus’ lyin’real quiet on the cheese lounge and not sayin’ Boo, it’s like she was stunned, she jus’ did whatever the old girl wanted. An’ when the time came, there was jus’ a doctor there an’ the old girl, no-one else. An’ the doctor, he probably knew there was somethin’ fishy, but of course he would’ve got money, too, and once he took that he had to button his lip forever, ’cos he could’ve got into real bad trouble himself. An’ it all went well, and the Frollein spent the next week in bed, an’ I had to stay in bed too jus’ in case. An’ the kid was with me, such a sickly thing, fed with the bottle. The Frollein was never ever allowed to see the kid, an’ the old girl wanted me to get used to it. It was such a sickly thing, we thought it’d die, that would’ve been best, ’cos then I would’ve had the ten thousand marks all to myself an’ not had to spend it looking after the kid. An’ after a week, well, they took the Frollein home to her villa in Lindenthal, an’ I took a room in a nice suburb, an’ moved in with the kid. But they didn’ want me, because of the kid, so I came here to Thieboldstrasse. An’ the old girl said that if anyone found out I could go to jail, so I should jus’ keep my mouth shut, an’ not confess it to the priest, either. An’ then I went back to my customers an’ told everyone that I’d had a baby, that’s why I’d been away for three months, an’ lots of them didn’ want anythin’ todo with me anymore. An’ then I went to Frau Kron, too, to see if she had any work for me again. She’d just had a baby,an’ it was dead, an’ Herr Kron was there an’ was very unhappy, ’cos his wife’d wanted a baby so much, an’ after this difficult birth she could never have another one. An’ then we spoke about me an’ my baby, an’ Herr Kron pricked up his ears, an’ asked what I wanted with a child, ’cos it’d only be a burden to me, an’ he was quite right, an’ then they adopted the baby, an’ it hadn’ been baptized yet, either, I mean it was