She would come into the kitchen, and sit down on a bench and talk: about a silk dress she had seen for sale; about the fine compliments Court Councillor Finkeldey had paid her; about the love affairs of these and the divorce proceedings of those; about Frau Feistelmann’s pearls, remarking that she would give ten years of her life if she also had such pearls. In fact, the word she used most frequently was “also.” She trembled and shook from head to foot with desires and wishes, low-minded unrest and lusts that flourish in the dark.
Often she would tell stories of her life in Munich. She told how she once spent a night with an artist in his studio, just for fun; and how on another occasion she had gone with an officer to the barracks at night simply on a wager. She told of all the fine-looking men who ran after her, and how she dropped them whenever she felt like it. She said she would let them kiss her sometimes, but that was all; or she would walk arm in arm with them through the forest, but that was all. She commented on the fact that in Munich you had to keep an eye out for the police and observe their hours, otherwise there might be trouble. For example, a swarthy Italian kept following her once—he was a regular Conte—and she couldn’t make the man go on about his business, and you know he rushed into her room and held a revolver before her face, and she screamed, of course she did, until the whole house was awake, and there was an awful excitement.
When Daniel endeavoured to put a stop to her wastefulness, she went to Philippina and complained. Philippina encouraged her. “Don’t you let him get away with anything,” said she, “let him feel that a woman with your beauty didn’t have to marry a skinflint.”
When she began to go with Edmund Hahn, she told Philippina all about it. “You ought to see him, Philippina,” she whispered in a mysterious way. “He is a regular Don Juan; he can turn the head of any woman.” She said he had been madly in love with her for two years, and now he was going to gamble for her; but in a very aristocratic and exclusive club, to which none but the nicest people belonged. “If I win, Philippina, I am going to make you a lovely present,” she said.
From then on her conversation became rather tangled and incoherent. She was out a great deal, and when she returned she was always in a rather uncertain condition. She had Philippina put up her hair, and every word she spoke during the operation was a lie. One time she confessed that she had not been in the theatre, as Daniel had supposed, but at the house of a certain Frau Bäumler, a good friend of Edmund Hahn. They had been gambling: she had won sixty marks. She looked at the door as if in fear, took out her purse, and showed Philippina three gold pieces.
Philippina had to swear that she would not give Dorothea away. A few days later Dorothea got into another party and got out of it successfully, and Philippina had to renew her oath. The old maid could take an oath with an ease and glibness such as she might have displayed in saying good morning. In the bottom of her heart she never failed to grant herself absolution for the perjury she was committing. For the time being she wished to collect, take notes, follow the game wherever it went. Moreover, it tickled and satisfied her senses to think about relations and situations which she knew full well she could never herself experience.
Dorothea became more and more ensnared. Her eyes looked like will-o’-the-wisps, her laugh was jerky and convulsive. She never had time, either for her husband or her child. She would receive letters occasionally that she would read with greedy haste and then tear into shreds. Philippina came into her room once quite suddenly; Dorothea, terrified, hid a photograph she had been holding in her hand. When Philippina became indignant at the secrecy of her action, she said with an air of inoffensive superiority: “You would not understand it, Philippina. That is something I cannot discuss with any one.”
But Philippina’s vexation worried her: she showed her the photograph. It was the picture of a young man with a cold, crusty face. Dorothea said it was an American whom she had met at Frau Bäumler’s. He was said to be very rich and alone.