have been “laid”—underestimating their sensitivity, not only Hubert’s but also Zurmack’s and Lühler’s, for whose sakes he memorized thefootball results every Monday—something that didn’t interest Zurmack and Lühler at all but, oddly enough, did interest Hubert, although probably not in that form: contrivedly proletarian, in stadium jargon, linking details of football prowess with hints about potency. Erwin would listen to nobody, knew everything better, would blabber away at her in a loud voice, as if at an office party, and in their presence, about “the fuzz,” and they disliked that more than anything, that word, they heard it often enough, it was the source of deep resentment, and even when he said it as a joke, as if in quotation marks (“And how’s our dear old ‘fuzz’ today?”), they resented it, even in quotation marks. They were very cool when he offered them cigarettes, and positively winced when he grabbed them by the sleeve or, worse still, slapped them on the back.
It really was difficult to become so intimately acquainted yet avoid familiarity, and what Erwin hinted at she didn’t find “dirty” at all, but quite natural: that when lying beside the pool she might arouse their “dirty imaginings.” “And even if you were to lie there naked, it would be none of their business, it’s up to them to stay neutral.” Hubert had confessed that he had desired her from the very first day, that she had aroused him—he spoke not of love but of desire, and the men walked and stood and hung around there as idle as herself, and then came the months, the long months, when the master of the house didn’t appear at all, neither at noon nor in the evening, warm evenings, nights when nothing happened, boredom, deathly silence, so that even Zurmack, that nice respectable man who was actually close to forty and certainly settled in his ways, said to her one day: “Why don’t you go to a party sometime, see some different people? We’ll look after your little girl all right.” So she risked going at least to buy shoes at Zwirner’s and to look for dresses at Holdkamp’s and Breslitzer’s. She left Kit with Zurmack and Miss Blum and drove into town with Lühler; at Breslitzer’s he stood around looking like a store detective; and when she went into the cubicle to change or undress, that elegant salon with its frills and velvets and doodads in everyshade of pink seemed to exude an atmosphere of sultry eroticism, an odor of physical intimacy, that she brought with her out of the cubicle. There seemed to be—well, something of the air she imagined to prevail in upper-class brothels, something lascivious, inviting, a kind of promise that was not kept—and on the drive home she had been on the point of placing a consoling hand on the arm of that poor Lühler, whom she knew to be a bachelor and lively enough, but she realized just in time that that could be fatal. For the first time she understood what her neighbor, the uninhibited, vulgar Erna Breuer, meant when she would say she wasn’t interested in either love or desire, that there were times when she simply wanted to be fucked, and that there were times when men also wanted just that, no more and no less, and Lühler must have also noticed how expensive the two dresses were, almost two thousand eight hundred for the two, and that must seem pretty expensive to him.
And then this spring she had yielded to Hubert, at noon, while Miss Blum was busy in the kitchen and Kit was whooping gleefully in the mudhole because she had finally succeeded in getting the better of Hubert after constantly challenging him on this warm morning, for perhaps the hundredth time, to come closer to the mudhole. He finally did, was pelted with mud, then slipped and fell, and had to go into the house to clean up. Later, long after she had become pregnant by him, even now, she wondered why she had gone into the house with him, since he knew perfectly well where the
It really was difficult to become so intimately acquainted yet avoid familiarity, and what Erwin hinted at she didn’t find “dirty” at all, but quite natural: that when lying beside the pool she might arouse their “dirty imaginings.” “And even if you were to lie there naked, it would be none of their business, it’s up to them to stay neutral.” Hubert had confessed that he had desired her from the very first day, that she had aroused him—he spoke not of love but of desire, and the men walked and stood and hung around there as idle as herself, and then came the months, the long months, when the master of the house didn’t appear at all, neither at noon nor in the evening, warm evenings, nights when nothing happened, boredom, deathly silence, so that even Zurmack, that nice respectable man who was actually close to forty and certainly settled in his ways, said to her one day: “Why don’t you go to a party sometime, see some different people? We’ll look after your little girl all right.” So she risked going at least to buy shoes at Zwirner’s and to look for dresses at Holdkamp’s and Breslitzer’s. She left Kit with Zurmack and Miss Blum and drove into town with Lühler; at Breslitzer’s he stood around looking like a store detective; and when she went into the cubicle to change or undress, that elegant salon with its frills and velvets and doodads in everyshade of pink seemed to exude an atmosphere of sultry eroticism, an odor of physical intimacy, that she brought with her out of the cubicle. There seemed to be—well, something of the air she imagined to prevail in upper-class brothels, something lascivious, inviting, a kind of promise that was not kept—and on the drive home she had been on the point of placing a consoling hand on the arm of that poor Lühler, whom she knew to be a bachelor and lively enough, but she realized just in time that that could be fatal. For the first time she understood what her neighbor, the uninhibited, vulgar Erna Breuer, meant when she would say she wasn’t interested in either love or desire, that there were times when she simply wanted to be fucked, and that there were times when men also wanted just that, no more and no less, and Lühler must have also noticed how expensive the two dresses were, almost two thousand eight hundred for the two, and that must seem pretty expensive to him.
And then this spring she had yielded to Hubert, at noon, while Miss Blum was busy in the kitchen and Kit was whooping gleefully in the mudhole because she had finally succeeded in getting the better of Hubert after constantly challenging him on this warm morning, for perhaps the hundredth time, to come closer to the mudhole. He finally did, was pelted with mud, then slipped and fell, and had to go into the house to clean up. Later, long after she had become pregnant by him, even now, she wondered why she had gone into the house with him, since he knew perfectly well where the
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