> Dose 24 · Machine translation (Claude Opus 5.5, October 2026) of Gabriele Tergit's *Effingers*, Chapter 25, from the second study on after-babel.vercel.app; this branch first read Sophie Duvernoy's English translation of Chapters 1–24.

# 25. SPRING

What a spring day, this Saturday in March of the year 1887! What sweetness, at ten in the morning!

Eugenie stood beside her lady’s maid, who was packing. The next day they would be off to the Riviera, to Nice, to the Hotel Barblan.

Along Tiergartenstrasse raced the horses. Beautiful women, veils fluttering around their top hats, and the gentlemen bareheaded or in round hats. Along Tiergartenstrasse walked the officers in their frock coats, broad red stripes down their trousers, on their way to the Great General Staff. It was quiet. Now and then, children’s laughter rang out from the gardens.

“It’s a shame to go away, really,” said Eugenie. “Berlin is so beautiful in March. I’ve already told Kniep to plant more crocuses next year. We have rather too many snowdrops and spring snowflakes. Ah, and here comes Fräulein Winkel. Well, Fräulein, how are you? Yes, let’s try it on once more.”

Eugenie stood in her toilette for the casino. Fräulein Winkel knelt, her mouth full of pins, adjusting something at the hem.

“I don’t like it at all, my girl, the way you always put the pins in your mouth. Frieda, bring Fräulein Winkel a pincushion. Fräulein Winkel, you look so miserable! What’s the matter? Come now, you can talk to me. A little higher up here, don’t you think? And this drapery a bit fuller. Is it temptation, now that it’s spring—or worries? Perhaps I can help you?”

“Well, if you really want me to talk. But please stand still, or I’ll stick a pin in madam. I was going with a gentleman—madam understands—a handsome gentleman, and I might have known right off that nothing would come of it. But you know how it is, you never believe it. And then he got married. Well, that’s just how it goes, and I always imagined he loved me, and everyone knows how rich gentlemen marry: money and the same station, and then it’s all settled.”

“Tell me, Fräulein Winkel—I don’t want to hurt your feelings—but doesn’t a woman lower herself a little when she . . . well, how shall I put it . . . when she grants a man his rights before marriage, right from the start? I mean, she sinks in men’s esteem.”

“Maybe that’s so. You’re probably right.”

“Don’t cry, Fräulein Winkel, my dear child. Go on, talk.”

“So I told myself he’s bound to be unhappy, and his wife’s very ugly, and he’s sure to cheat on her.”

“And now?”

“And now I’ve run into him. And she’s so beautiful, you can’t describe how beautiful she is, and there was a Spreewald wet nurse along, too, with a pram. And as they went by, I happened to hear him say, ‘Oh, Annettchen, what happy people we are—all of nature is smiling on us.’”

“He said ‘Annettchen’? Well, well. Yes, that is bitter. Isn’t there anyone who loves you? We always want to do the loving ourselves, and we’re never grateful enough when someone loves us.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s so. Now just one more stitch at the shoulder, dear madam, and the agraffe like this?”

“No. Better like this, don’t you think?”

“Yes, like that. We’ve got a new young man at the shop, Lehmann, he keeps the books, and he follows me around and is always making sheep’s eyes at me, and my friend Lischen and I can’t help laughing when he twists his hat into a sausage while he talks to me.”

“One should only ever marry men who make sheep’s eyes. I’ll take the dress off, and you can sew it right here. You know the councilor, you know how clever and good he is, but he was never handsome, and I know you think me very beautiful. You may sometimes have thought that I married my husband for his money. But I had no need of that, none at all. It was just that I had been through a very great disappointment before. We in Russia aren’t as strict as people are here, where it’s frowned upon if a young girl so much as goes for a walk. At a grand carnival ball, I had met a Guards officer, handsome as a picture. And we had the chance to meet alone, and he was in love and reckless, and, in short, he kissed me, and, as is only natural, I thought the earth must stand still. He took me in his arms and said, ‘What do I care about the world—and tomorrow’—oh, I hear it as if it were yesterday—‘we’ll meet.’ I went, and—in vain. All around me was snow and ice, and I kept thinking he must surely come to the city woods. But he didn’t come. I went through every torment of hell in that moment, and then I received a little note: he didn’t know, and whether he dared, and responsibility—it was a very honorable and decent letter—and whether I would like to see him once more. I wrote, ‘Yes,’ and we went for a walk. I saw that he loved me, I felt it, but he said, ‘I think we should part now,’ or, ‘Please, my dear young lady, it’s clouding over, it might snow.’ He didn’t have the courage of his love. So I ran home, and at home sat my present husband. I couldn’t make up my mind right away—it was the same for me as for you. I loved the other man. But then I let myself be loved, and it has made me very happy. When you’re the one who loves, you’re always trembling and afraid and lonely, and you need friends to pour your heart out to. But when you’re loved, then you know that whatever happens, you have someone you can rely on. So now, think it over—about Lehmann.”

“Yes, madam, let’s try the dress on once more. But there’s something else: when you’ve got nothing, that’s hard too. I’d like to set up shop, and my former friend told me I could always come to him, but you don’t want to do that, it’s too embarrassing, to end up beholden to him on top of everything.”

“How much would you need to get started?”

“I’ve worked it out—about two thousand marks, but that’s a lot of money, and if I have to pay such high interest right from the start, it won’t work at all, even if someone does lend it to me.”

Eugenie took two thousand-mark bills from her dressing table.

“Why, that’s—what can I say!” cried Käte Winkel.

“Take it, and make money with it.”

“Oh, such kindness, such kindness.”

“My husband said to me, The childless woman has the most children, and they must be provided for, so I’ll always give you a bundle of thousand-mark bills that we won’t talk about and won’t account for.”

Eugenie looked in the mirror once more. “This fashion really is too silly. How much more padding are we going to strap on back there? And what does Frau Koller say? Long yellow gloves?”

“Yes, I have them here.”

“Very nice. Frieda, put them straight into the glove box.”

“Will madam recommend customers to me when I go into business for myself—or even come herself?”

“Why, my dear, I know what you can do. Of course—that goes without saying.”

Käte Winkel collected a few winter things from the lady’s maid as well and left, the boxes over her arm.

What a spring day, this Saturday in March of the year 1887! What sweetness, at eleven in the morning!

Sofie sat in her room at the small, wobbly desk, took up an agate penholder, and wrote:

“I love you. I dream of you. Why did you tell me I’m sweet. I sat at the grand piano and played Schumann’s ‘Frauenlieb und -leben’; ‘Since I first saw you, blind I seem to be; always, as in dreaming, you alone I see.’ When are you coming to see us again? I don’t dare ask Theodor.”

And then she addressed an envelope and asked Anna, white-armed and red-cheeked, to deliver the letter. The letter went to Arnold Kramer.

“You look so flushed, Sofie. Aren’t you feeling well?”

“It’s nothing, Father, nothing at all. Perhaps I played the piano a bit too much.”

“Don’t overdo it, my daughter, don’t overdo it—keep to a noble measure. Fräulein Kelchner, you’ll take the girl to the Tiergarten later.”

What a spring day, this Saturday in March of the year 1887! What sweetness, at one in the afternoon!

The guard was marching up! At a window of the university stood Privatdozent Waldemar Goldschmidt. He saw the opera house, Unter den Linden, the curved baroque facade of the library; saw the guard, the lockstep, white summer trousers, blue jackets, shining buttons, red collars, white plumes, and the drum major out in front—“fifers and drummers, a warlike sound.” A crowd beyond counting. At his window stood the old Kaiser, as he did every day at noon when the guard marched up.

Popular enthusiasm, thought Waldemar: this time for the right man, tomorrow for the wrong one. The law? One would have to create the law entirely anew. Roman law, tailored to slaves and to property, had many flaws. How far would one be able to do without it in the new Civil Code?

The door opened.

“My dear colleague, what an honor!”

“I heard at the library that you are using the very volume of the Monumenta that I need.”

“It’s at your disposal, of course.”

“You were just watching the popular enthusiasm?”

“The very same phrase was going through my mind. Our universally revered and venerable sovereign may deserve it. But you know where I stand on Bismarck. The greater the man, the greater the shadow.”

“My young friend,” said the old historian, “I was recently in my native region to study Hessian folk expressions. It is good to refresh one’s boyhood memories in one’s own small homeland, before they are wholly absorbed into this beautifully structured Empire.”

“I had no idea you were a federalist!”

“I always have been. Centralism is utterly un-German. We are doing our very best to forfeit a part of the freedom that Germany possessed before the war. It is a principle of history that the victors always become the cultural imitators of the vanquished.”

“We have won our own servitude. This legacy of the defeated Caesar is, in my eyes, the greatest crime he committed against humanity. I could forget Napoleon’s Second of December—but never the German reaction after the victory!”

Waldemar stood with his back to Unter den Linden, where military marches were still ringing out. In the high-ceilinged room, lined with the black leather spines of books, the world-famous scholar sat across from him, resplendent with long, snow-white hair.

“I’m surprised, my young friend, that you see France this way. After all, I know you’re related to all sorts of people over there.”

“That has never kept me from seeing France more clearly than people who spend only a few blissful weeks in Paris.”

“In France, where centralization was carried to such a high degree, no one was promoted who did not swear in verba magistri. Our political fragmentation has fortunately protected us until now from the general effect of such pernicious influences, which reached down into the smallest matters. Here in Germany, it is exactly the opposite. If we have some outstanding man, we seek above all to show ourselves independent of his influence, and each of us, however insignificant he may otherwise be, prides himself on choosing his own direction, even an admittedly worse one, merely to give tangible proof of that independence. I am speaking,” he said, suddenly more animated, “in the present tense, but I ought to be speaking in the past. I tell you, here on March 16, 1887: if things go on this way in the new German Empire, clinics and libraries will be turned back into barracks. The life of the mind is in danger; it is being devoured by the state and by machines. And what about you? When will you be made a full professor?”

Waldemar shrugged.

“The faculty wishes it, so I’ve heard.”

“Oh, no,” said Waldemar. “If I had myself baptized, they would let me into the hallowed circle. But I’m suspect for other reasons too. The great are not well disposed toward anyone who wants to blow away the dust and abolish privileges. Besides, one may be baptized because one considers Christianity a development of the old religion of the prophets, a milder, gentler ethic—centuries younger, after all. But all such considerations must give way the moment baptism brings advantages. It is repugnant when an act born of the most delicate stirrings of conscience, of deliberations of the most personal kind, leads to a post. A premium on spinelessness.”

“You’re right.”

The great man left the room. Goldschmidt took his hat, coat, and cane. Let the commentary stew, and let § 1378 of the draft of a new Civil Code wait a while longer for its final wording.

He had gone a few steps down Unter den Linden when a coupé pulled up right beside him.

“Waldemar.”

“Oh, Susanna, life is lovely after all.”

“Would you like to get in?”

“No, on the contrary—you get out. I have a mind to introduce a beautiful woman to the spring. Let’s have lunch together at Hiller’s. Agreed?”

“Agreed. What do you say to my success?”

“The Count? He won’t keep.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re an artist, not a kept woman.”

“But a faithful lover.”

“Perhaps.”

Oh, what sweetness there was on this March day! Soft was the red carpet, soft the sofa that received Susanna Widerklee, soft the armchair in which Waldemar sat.

Hardly a seat was to be had. There sat officers, beautiful women, a few landowners, Junkers from the provinces.

“Back there sits the ancient Count Perponcher, and over there Count Waldersee, a coming man, a court general,” said Waldemar. “Lobster, then rump steak, I think—or what else, Susanna?”

“I’m as hungry as a bear. Yes, that suits me.”

“And what shall we drink? A Moselle?”

“No, I’d rather have a Rhine wine.”

“It’s heady, Susanna,” and he looked into her eyes.

“And what if that’s what I want?”

“That suits me.”

An hour later.

“Shall we have our coffee here, or at your place?”

“At my place, I think.”

“Good, Susanna, good.”

Susanna had the curtains drawn and the lamp lit. Waldemar sat down at the grand piano and played the “Magic Fire Music.”

“The Count,” she said, “is very charming.”

“And what about me, Susanna?”

He stood up, pulled the woman hard against him, kissed her mouth. They knew each other. Susanna longed for him. He led her the few steps to the bedroom. Oh, how she loved him, this swift storm, this profound indifference to reluctance and resistance, this contempt for all untruth!

“Oh, don’t, please don’t,” said Susanna.

“Why do you say no when you want to say yes?” She sensed that he didn’t like it. “Shame on you for being ashamed!”

What a blessing, thought Susanna as she lay with him, to be allowed to be honestly sensual!

“Waldemar, are you angry when I kiss you like this?”

“Why, Susanna! Are there men who would be angry?”

“Not angry, but disappointed. They want the pure woman.”

“Oxen, in the truest sense of the word. Hence this silly idolizing of the young girl.”

The fire burned in the fireplace.

“Our coffee’s getting cold,” said Susanna.

They fetched the coffee from the next room, crouched in front of the embers, and drank the mocha. Susanna slipped on a dressing gown, went to the piano, and sang, “The lotus flower is fearful . . .”

Waldemar got dressed. What was singing there was love, was passion. Susanna loved him. But he had been through bad times with her once before. Not all that again. There was no keeping her. He always believed it would work out one day after all, but it never did.

What a spring day, this Saturday in March of the year 1887! What sweetness, at five in the afternoon!

Quitting time on Chausseestrasse. Children hopped across chalk lines or played marbles in the hollow between four cobblestones. Father strung twine along the balcony for the Virginia creeper or tinkered with the pigeon coop. Mother sewed.

“I’m going over to the Fresh Mutton for a Molle of beer. Just one Molle.”

“Paule, do you have to?”

“Aw, don’t fuss, I’ll be back soon.”

“He’ll go and drink away a week’s wages again!”

“If I had a little woman like you, something nice and solid, you wouldn’t catch me going to the bar,” said the bed lodger.

“Hey, what’s gotten into you! I don’t come with the room—let go!”

“I’m only saying, seeing as your husband keeps you so short. You could have it better with me.”

“Don’t you say a word against my husband. It’s only ’cause we’ve just got the one room. That’s the only reason.”

The freckle-faced apprentice announced Mayer, the insurance agent, to Paul.

“Ah, good day, Herr Mayer.”

“Good day, Herr Effinger. I thought I’d come myself for once. Things are easier to discuss when people know each other personally. In writing, misunderstandings usually creep in.”

“Well, here’s the insurance contract. There are several things in it I wanted to query.”

“You’ve built a fine factory here, Herr Effinger. As for me, I’m a wreck.”

“Why, Herr Mayer, how can you say such a thing! You look splendid!”

“Oh, I’m an old man, Herr Effinger, and nobody sang at my cradle that I’d end up an insurance agent.”

“Such is life!” said Paul.

“How right you are. If I still had the sarcasm of my youth, I would say it was chiefly because the profession of insurance agent was still quite unknown in the year of my birth. I was born in 1822. I have known the world. I knew the Paris of the Second Empire. Whoever didn’t know it doesn’t know what life is. The sixties in Paris—that was one long cancan, of the mind as well. You are still young, Herr Effinger, but I sense that you have sympathy for a ruined man. I owned the banking house of Mayer, Lamprecht & Co.”

“Oh!” said Paul, in admiring surprise.

“Yes, you know what that name meant. In ’59 we handled the issue of the Sardinian war loan. I financed the Luxembourg railway.”

“Yes, yes, a great firm, a wealthy house.”

“All over now. My father built Emmanuel Oppner’s house. I don’t want to say anything against Oppner & Goldschmidt, but in those days they were people of no consequence. It breaks my heart when I walk past it now and then. During the renovations, I went and looked at it in secret, old fool that I am. It isn’t my house anymore. They’ve painted it all wrong. And over the bright murals, so enchantingly light, these barbarians have pasted dark leather wallpaper. Unbelievable, really.”

“I don’t know much about such things, Herr Mayer.”

“No, no, and I don’t want to bore you. I’m an aesthete, yes, I know a thing or two about art.”

Paul thought: And he did go bankrupt.

“The Gotthard Tunnel was the ruin of me.”

“A lot of money was lost on it.”

“I could sing you a song about that, but apart from ten percent, I’ve no debts left. I’m still paying them off. I owe it to my name and to my daughter. She’s just coming to fetch me—the poor girl gives piano lessons. Won’t you walk a little way with us?”

What a spring day, this Saturday in March 1887, at six in the evening! What a swarm of people on Chausseestrasse!

“You don’t have an easy time of it, Fräulein Mayer,” said Paul.

“No, no, but at least I’m earning.”

“That’s hard for a young girl. The other day a young girl came to me about a job copying letters. But young girls in the office—that’s no good. A woman is best off at home.”

“But what if she has no one to offer her a home?”

“Then of course it’s dreadful. But usually the womenfolk are needed in the family. There’s a child to bring up, or an invalid to nurse.”

“But what if a girl doesn’t want that?”

“Then she’s eccentric.”

“Do you think so?”

“In my opinion, yes.”

“Father, you’re falling way behind. We’ll lose each other. And in this neighborhood, of all places.”

Broad Friedrichstrasse at the Weidendammer Brücke. Railway over the river, little omnibus with a pony, a one-legged man crying, “Wax matches, wax matches,” and whores gathering up their skirts, a rustle of many ruffles. Gentleman with a monocle, and carriages on their way to the theater.

“We turn off here. Perhaps we’ll see you at our home sometime.”

“Gladly, Herr Mayer, though I’m always very busy.”

“Adieu.” “Adieu.” “Adieu.”

“Nice fellow, Amalie, don’t you think?”

“A bit dry.”

“You mustn’t always find fault with young men.”

“I’m only saying. They’ve cut Mother’s piecework rate again. Twenty pfennigs to sew a skirt. That comes to maybe ten marks a week. And that’s not counting the kerosene, or the thread.”

“Amalie, you’re breaking my heart.”

“But Father, I’m only telling you how it is. The contractor, a nasty piece of work, says the firm is squeezing him too. I’d like to know who he’s delivering to. He won’t say. Which proves he’s getting much more for a skirt than he lets on.”

Wool market on Klosterstrasse. Königstrasse between Alexanderplatz and the palace is jammed with covered wagons. In the ancient castle of the margraves of Brandenburg, the wool is stored. Next to it is the Gray Cloister, Bismarck’s school.

“No getting through, once again.”

“You stupid goat, somebody ought to give you a good hiding so you’d see there’s an ’orse standing here!”

“My good man, don’t curse like that!”

“Don’t you talk to me like that, with your fancy mug!”

“Amalie, come, leave the rabble be.”

“God, Father, if I could talk to the contractor like that, he might give fifteen pfennigs more per skirt.”

“My child, don’t forget who you are.”

Dear, unsuspecting Father! thought Amalie.

How the stairwell stank! How horribly the apartment smelled of all the woolens, of the tenants! If only they could at least have had it repapered before they moved in!

What a spring day, this Saturday in March of the year 1887, at eight in the evening!

Widerklee was singing the page in *Figaro*. Theodor waited outside the opera house. For a year and a half, he had been going almost every day to Charlottenstrasse, where she had an enchanting three-room apartment near the opera. Here she received her friends in an elegant dressing gown and elegant little slippers.

One evening Waldemar had come upon Theodor at her place. Theodor was perched on a stool at her side, kissing her drooping hand without pause.

Theodor waited. Waiting with him at the stage door were several admirers. But also waiting with him was a coupé lined with white silk, on which a footman and a coachman sat motionless. What he had feared came to pass. Theodor saw Widerklee, in her evening cloak, step quickly into the coupé. Theodor was nearly out of his mind with jealousy. He had never thought about this affair, never considered how it would end. He loved—not platonically, as most of his friends did, but as a man.

Now he stood, cast out, abandoned, without explanation, under the lindens, in the rain, in the dark. What now? Wait outside Widerklee’s house? But surely she was driving to the other man. Who was it? And if he knew, what then? Shoot him down? Challenge him? Kill himself?

He walked on, on and on, back and forth, this way and that.

A brazen girl accosted him and pulled him into a little shop, outside whose curtained windows a red lantern burned. Erna Schmidt’s Wine Parlor. The girl was very young, barely seventeen. She took Theodor into a back room, lay down on the red woolen chaise longue without further ado, and drew a curtain across. The girl, who turned out to be very beautiful, enchanted him. She comforted him. Her brazenness, her depravity, fell away for a little while. Her name was Wanda, and she was an orphan. Shoved from one foster family to the next, she had been seduced by a bed lodger when she was barely fourteen. She had worked, too. But this way was easier. Only the madam exploited her. On the greasy sofa, a gentle compassion blossomed in Theodor for this child, who was as dainty and velvet-skinned as a fawn.

“Will I see you again?”

“I don’t know,” said Theodor, and began to cry.

The girl crouched down beside him. “Why are you crying, mister?” she asked. She stroked him.

Here, with this street girl he didn’t know, he poured out his heart; here he could say how forsaken he was, that he loved a clever, beautiful, and remarkable woman, a great artist, that he was being betrayed.

The girl said, “Nah, don’t go killing anybody, you might get life for that. You mustn’t take it so hard.”

“But I can’t live without her.”

“Well, maybe you’ll get her back.”

All this in a shop with a red lantern in the east of Berlin, Erna Schmidt’s Wine Parlor.

The girl got dressed.

“Are you going out again?” asked Theodor. The girl nodded. Theodor gave her a gold piece. “But don’t go out again tonight,” he said. “Get some rest.” He gave her a kiss.

The sap! she thought, and waited until he was out of sight. Twenty marks was a lot of money, but how long did a girl stay young?

What a spring day, this Saturday in March of the year 1887! What sweetness at three in the morning!