Irmgard Keun - After Midnight

First published in Germany in 1937, this short novel tells the story from the point of view of nineteen year old Sanna about her family and friends as Germany is changing. It shows how the political changes impact social changes. The central theme is romance but it is really about how individuals navigate the new rules as the power of the Nazis grows. It is now published as a Penguin Modern Classic, translated by Anthea Bell. 

The young women are hanging out in bars more than you might expect for the time period. I like the female references and the humour. 

Some extracts:

Gerti is washing her swollen eyes. We must go back to our table. My head's full of confused, random thoughts, like a ball of wool I must knit into words. I must knit a stocking of words. It takes so long, and I forget what I was going to say a minute ago, as if I'd dropped a stitch. 

.....

Herr Breitwehr believed Frau Silias's story about the fake silver fox fur. So then Frau Breitwehr went off to Godenheimer's the furriers, even though it's a Jewish shop and a good German woman is not supposed to buy anything form Jews. But  Godenheimer's had the best and cheapest silver foxes, and buttered Frau Breitwehr up, and called her 'Madam' every other sentence. So she bought the silver fox fur. When she wears it, they look like a rich fur taking a poor woman out for a walk. 

(nice use of humour in this simile here)

.......

I've often noticed how pleased and proud men are at having to knock in a certain way at the doors of perfectly harmless pubs, in order to get in. I expect there are some men who take to politics just for the sake of the secret signals you have to give. 

.........

Then the Assistant Secretary said he yearned for marriage, since only in the Christian marriage could he give free rein to his desires. It was all right then. I thought I'd love to be an Assistant Secretary's wife, on account of Aunt Adelheid and everyone in Lappesheim. But then I'd have to put up with the free rein of those alarming desires. I couldn't picture that part of it. 

.....

The Assistant Secretary had thought I'd be inheriting the thriving pub in Lappesheim, and getting money from my humble but well-to-do father before that, in which case he wouldn't have objected to my common origins. Because he himself is wonderfully well educated. He told me how he stood by the grave of someone called Holderlin and read a poem by this Holderlin. Not just once, either; several times. These were always edifying moments. All this was so sacred to him that he couldn't talk about it, couldn't even mention it. He went on to talk about it. 

....

What can one do about a pale-blue sort of voice like that? You can't argue with it, you can't get angry with it, you can't laugh at it. What does someone like Franz want with a voice anyway? He himself seems quite surprised to have one. 

(nice use of synesthesia and anaphora here) 

............

A waiter showed the girl one of the few empty seats in the restaurant, but she didn't want to sit down; she shook her head, embarrassed and shy. I'd been just as shy myself, a few months back. Now I felt very fine and superior, compared to her. And she probably didn't have any money. Her blouse was cheap and shoddy. I'd have wanted paying to wear a thing like that. She looked prettier that I ever did. I was glad the waiter showed his contempt by pointedly taking no notice of her. 

...........

And back at Aunt Adelheid's at that time, I was a good deal dimmer than I am today. But even then I was scared stiff someone might notice I didn't understand a word of it. Goring and the other ministers often shout over the radio, very loud and clear and angry. 'There are still some who have not understood what it is all about, but we shall know how to deal with them.' I hate hearing that kind of thing, it's creepy, because I still don't know what it is all about, or what they mean. And it's far too dangerous to ask anyone. Judging by things I've picked up from what I've heard and read, I could be either criminal or of chronically unsound mind. Neither of which must come out or I'll be done for. If I'm criminal I'll go to prison, and if I'm of chronically unsound mind they'll operate on me so that I can't get married and have children.  

..........

We went on to talk about all our speechifying Party men, in a perfectly harmless way, and Fraulein Fricke and Aunt Adelheid started going on about the Fuhrer again. they thought he was absolutely marvellous. Aunt Adelheid told us about the wild enthusiasm that fills her when she heard the Fuhrer speak in the Exhibition Hall in Cologne. Paul asked her what she had particularly like about it, and I said, 'She liked the way he was sweating.'.  

...........

So I had to sign a statement saying I didn't want to listen to Goring telling me off over the radio. And the best things about the Fuhrer's speech was the way he had been sweating. 

After I'd signed this statement I was taken down to the magistrate who had powers of summary jurisdiction. He talked to me like a priest at a cut-price funeral. He was still a young man, and very full of his own importance. 

(nice use of simile here) 

.......

This is Frau Grautisch speaking about her husband: 

'.... I don't mind him drinking twice what he used to these days, just as long as he doesn't go out to the pub. A woman who loves her husband and wants to keep him isn't letting him out to the pub, not these days. Liable to shoot their mouths off, men are, here in Cologne. And when they've had a few they will start on about those stupid politics, cracking jokes and making filthy remarks, thinking it's all among friends. Then they wake up next day with a thick head, and some jealous person or other whose business isn't doing well will have gone chasing off to the Gestapo or some Party office or what-have-you to inform on them. When I get home now, Sanna, I'll find my old man sitting there grumbling. "Elvira," he says, "this place is no better than a concentration camp." "Fancy you not noticing that before," says I. "We're all in a concentration camp, the whole nation is, it's only the Government can go running around free."'   

....

Two people may be having a harmless little argument, and a moment later they'd have made their quarrel up again if Betty Raff hadn't come along to bring them together. People Betty Raff wants to bring together remain lifelong enemies.  

.......

Liska gets happier and happier. She's never so well as when she is ill. She's a queen on a throne of white pillows. She laughs, and loves everyone. Frau Winter has to get scarves and silk camisoles out of the wardrobe, and Liska gives them away to everyone who happens to be there. And she gives everyone exactly what they'd have liked to have.

.........

The Strumer man:

' Oh, I'm only a very simple, uneducated man, ladies and gentlemen, but I've educated myself out of the Sturmer, you see. But for the Sturmer I'd never have known about the terrible dangers threatening the Aryan destiny. I'd have been blind to the whole Jewish question. I will say this, though, it's in my nature to have a deeply inquiring mind. I get it from my stars. I hope you won't think me immodest when I tell you I was born under Leo.' And the Sturmer man falls silent.  

(this made me laugh, being a Leo myself)  

.......

We are outside the cafe, in the street, disconsolate as unredeemed pawnbroker's pledges. We none of us know what to do with the ourselves, we none of us know what to do with the other. A sticky sort of weariness keeps us together; we can only tear ourselves apart by force. We are all rather drunk, and have become set in our longings.    

(nice use of simile: unredeemed pawnbroker's pledges) 

.........

'Have you got any idea where he might be?' Betty Raff asks me. Her voice is shaking; her hands sprinkle a variety of health-giving herbs into a teapot. The water on the stove begins to bubble. Betty is vegetarian and high-minded because she wants to be free of physical things, all pure and spiritual, but I have never seen anyone so constantly concerned with the body as vegetarian Betty Raff. I know drunks and gluttons with far more time available for things of the spirit than Betty. 'I believe an apple would do me good now,; she'll say, and piously grates an apple into a sort of mush and then eats it. Or she will make an elaborate herb soup to heighten her vital consciousness. If she eats three plums, she has to chew a quarter of a lemon slowly afterwards. She goes on a special springtime diet in spring, requiring five radishes every evening. Sometimes she has to eat her vegetables raw and sometimes cooked. On Sundays she eats wheatflakes and some kind of sawdust with milk or fruit juice stirred into it. Well, you can't actually say she eats, because eating is what ordinary people do. Betty Raff partakes her food. Sometimes she suspects that she is partaking of something contaminated by the smell of roasting meat, which would poison her bloodstream. Then she has to drink pure grapejuice and  and take spoonfuls of vegetable juices. She makes herself something different every hour of the day, and eats in a grave, sad, reproachful sort of way, as if she were making a great sacrifice on behalf of the crude, unheeding world around her.    

............

I knew the man by sight. He sits in Bogener's wineshop every afternoon and every evening, by himself, circumspectly drinking half a bottle of claret. I knew his way of beckoning to the waiter. I knew his way of giving a tip. I knew his usual seat. I knew the newspaper he read, I knew the wine he drank. I knew when he came in and I knew when he left. I'd never spoken to him, never thought much about him, but he was familiar to me, familiar and as unimportant as my big toenail. And to see him sitting in a different part of the cafe talking to Algin struck me as strange, mysterious and not quite right, as it my big toenail had suddenly taken the place of my eyelashes. 

(striking original image here)

.............

The quotes here might misrepresent the novel as being light. It isn't. But I love the descriptions of people's quirks and foibles and the very identifiable ridiculousness of how people behave when they take themselves very seriously or lack self awareness. The people in the novel are familiar to us now. Human follies and pretentions don't change. 

When the Nazis came to power they blacklisted the works of many writers, including Keun. She attempted to sue the Gestapo for loss of earnings!