Maria Mondmilch was the only child of the art-historian Doctor
Maximilian Mondmilch and his lovely wife Marga Mondmilch. Mrs.
Mondmilch is said to have been at one time a scullery-maid in the
cafe in which Mr. Mondmilch--who at the time was a student--drank tea,
read newspapers, and smoked. After the birth of the child she had
secretly left her spouse, supposedly to spend a few weeks with a
champagne-waiter. Thereafter she fooled around alternately with very
different men from very different social classes. She returned when
she learned that the incurable Doctor had been brought to a mental
institution for diseases of the brain. She carefully looked after
the mortally ill man for the short time before he died. Then she
married a wonderful coachman, who idolized her.
Doctor Mondmilch's illnes was first discovered when he wanted to
commit a criminal offense against his eight-year old daughter.
Fortunately the atrocity was able to be prevented at the last moment.
The child, frightened in heart and mind, was placed in the care of
the madman's brother, the excellent Moriz von Mondmilch, a
first-class administrative officer. The last word of the dying
art-historian was, "Maria."
A curious affection developed between the uncle and the niece.
Nothing happened that could have been construed as illegal. The
passion between the child and the old man aroused the jealousy of old
Mrs. Minna von Mondmilch. After the marital discord had become too
burdensome, the angered civil servant felt compelled to agree one
year later to a separation from his ward. He also had to consider
his daughter, who had become a young woman. The parting was hard.
His Excellency Moriz von Mondmilch had a crying fit.
Maria Mondmilch arrived in a large city. The strangers with whom she
boarded were paid a large amount of money. But otherwise they did
not concern themselves with Maria Mondmilch. She exchanged secret
letters with the noble uncle, filled with overflowing longing for
life and hopes for adventure. The consciousness of constantly having
something to hide gave her a solemn, inexplicable superiority. Maria
Mondmilch preserved her uncle's letters as though they were sacred
relics. Some of the letters were lost and became evidence in the
famous divorce trial that excited the whole country.
Maria Mondmilch was a student in the big city at a girls' high school
She was not among the best students. Sometimes she used her time
diligently. She was accused of having instigated all kinds of dirty
tricks that took place. When it became know that the head of the
institution had met her in the evening on a disreputable street, it
was expected that she would be dismissed from school. In the
proceedings against a teacher of literature at the high school who,
in spite of being accused of having committed several sexual crimes,
had to be acquitted, she was the most important witness.
The young girl preferred to spend the night in the notorious section
of the city. Maria Mondmilch allowed every possible kind of
riff-raff, to speak to her, but she ran away from most of the men.
She was not yet fifteen years old when she permitted a peddlar, whose
acquaintance
she had made one filthy evening in a foul alley on a bridge, under
neglected, ancient gas lamps, to photograph her naked in indecent
poses. When she was sixteen years old, she spent Christmas vacation
with a handsome electrician, who was a complete stranger to her,
named Hans Hampelmann, in a run-down hotel, posing as husband and
wife. Given her erotic needs, it was not difficult to explain her
decision to study medicine after graduating.
The hungry actor Schwertschwanz--an intelligent and worn-out looking
person, who stank of cheap chocolate--moved with aimless longing
through the nocturnal, glittering, noisy streets of the city in which
Maria Mondlich studied medicine. He met her while she was returning
sadly from a lecture on human sexual diseases and male disorders.
For fun--pretty much--he spoke to her. Together they both went into
a cheap saloon.
Before speaking to the student, the actor Schwertschwanz had been
thinking about what could most readily explain the doubt he had had
for many years: the ultimate unimportance of all events; or only the
happenstance that important people often must croak because of a lack
of appropriate nourishment and medicine... the inadequacy of women...
The incurable nature of Tabes disease, the symptoms of which he
believed he detected in himself... When Maria Mondmilch named her
profession, he lit up. Syphilis and its consequences were mentioned.
Miss Mondmilch told of frightening cases. Mr. Schwertschwanz
listened, shocked and carried away. He was fascinated when she,
coquetishly stressing that she unfortunately could maintain only
professional relationships with men, as though unintentionally
revealed a well shaped but austere leg, that was encased in an
exciting, ordinary, half silk stocking.
The student did not hide her liking for the actor. His shabby
appearance filled her with confidence. The area around his
internally) almost rotted, true-hearted blue eyes, worn out, as she
imagined, by make-up and hopelessness, by excessive whorings or
masturbation, gripped her soul. His being, a mixture of smugness and
unashamed aggressiveness, very much excited her. Amidst the
screaming, the waiters, the beer-benches, and the vapors, under the
addictive yellow gaslights, she had to call out with rapture, "I've
never met a man like you before, Mr. Schwertschwanz," He was so
pleased, he touched her. While a troop of soldiers marching by
outside whistled the well-known folk song, "Little Maria, you sweet
little creature etc..."
Without a spoken agreement, the lovers, arm-in-arm, moved in the
direction of the student's room when they left the boozy saloon.
Upstairs, Maria Mondmilch laid down, with her legs crossed, on a
sleep-sofa near the bookcase. The actor sank into a soft chair, next
to which a small table with an ornate bottle of cognac stood.
Talking was difficult. Each wanted to sob out to the other how much
he or she had suffered from childhood on. They wanted to gobble each
other up, so greedy were they as the minutes went by. Something
stood between them. The actor drank the cognac. The student played
nervously with her hands and feet.
The actor could no longer bear his agony. He cried out gently--it
was as though something had been shattered to pieces: "I shall be
frank. I am syphilitic"--Some tears rolled down his cheeks. He was
startled by how insincere he was. The student held her hands in
front of her face. As theatrically as he. But unconsciously.
He had miscalculated. Her erotic excitement was out of control. She
wriggled on her sleep-sofa. She held out her hand to him. She
whispered: "Poor man, come." He did not take her hand. With lowered
eyes, in a face filled with unhappy renunciation, whose effect had
been tried out
on many hysterical women, he said: "You of all people should know
that contact with me might give you an infection, although in the
last few years my Wasserman test was always negative." Then she said
heroically: "Frankness deserves frankness. I am a virgin."
Instinctively she had taken vengeance. He no longer had control of
his overwrought senses. Like a cat he pounced onto the girl in the
middle of the sleep-sofa. Now she fought him off. Ready, with
anxious eyes, to give herself to him.
As they were wrestling the student sang her theme-song: "I am Maria
Mondmilch, the girl, the virgin. Open your door for me. You, I
tried the surface of many men's flesh, old men and young. I tempted
them all. In all of them I sought my man. No one penetrated me
deeper than my skin... I prowled around during the days. Ran during
the nights. I slept in the same bed with musicians and aristocrats.
I was with salesmen and with pimps and with students. I ran around
with bicycle artists and with lawyers. I let no man pass without
looking him in the eye. Whether it rained. Or was winter. Or the
sun shone. No one could call me his woman. No one was my man. One
shot himself. One jumped into a swamp. I am guiltless... One went
mad. One kicked me. Most went away as though nothing bad had
happened... You, blue-eyed sorrowful face beneath me, oh, would that
you were my man, that I might bloom in you. Are you my man, in whom
I blissfully sink--"
And the actor sang to the student as they wrestled: "I am the actor
Schwertschwanz, the man, the lecher. In all the bodies in which I
have drunk, I sought you. I have become a drinker. Out of longing.
I have poisoned my blood out of love. How meaningless it would be if
I--half dead--found you now. I have looked for you too long to find
you yet."
Then Maria Mondmilch called out as she fell on him: "Little
Schwertschwanz, do you love me--" And already intoxicated: "He does
not love me."
The man fall back in utter indolence. The student spat on his collar.
Rammed the hat on the head of the spineless man. Pressed a gold
coin into his hand. Threw him out.
While the actor Schwertschwanz, trembling with desire, went about
searching for the right whore, Maria Mondlich sat over a thick
anatomy textbook. She looked at the drawing of a completely naked
man, And howled like a dog at the sea.