It was much harder to get underwear and good boots, and here the trouble really began. Once again her friends helped as well as they could, but there wasn’t much they could do. They came up with only coarse, mended underwear, and instead of ankle-boots with high heels she had to wear slippers that you would rather hide than show. People comforted Pepi by saying that Frieda wasn’t very well dressed her-self, and sometimes she went around looking such a sloven that the guests would rather be served by the lads from the cellar than the barmaid. Those were the facts of the matter, but Frieda could get away with it because she was in favour and highly regarded; if a lady happens to go out looking dirty and carelessly dressed for once, she is all the more enticing, but a beginner like Pepi? And anyway Frieda couldn’t dress well, she had no taste at all; if someone has a sallow skin, she can’t do much about that, but she doesn’t have to wear a low-cut cream blouse against it, like Frieda, so that your eyes watered from looking at all that yellow. And even if that hadn’t been so, she was too mean to dress well; she kept everything she earned, no one knew what for. She didn’t need money in the job, she made use of lies and tricks instead, she set an example that Pepi couldn’t and wouldn’t follow, and so it was right for her, Pepi, to prettify herself so that she could make her mark at the very outset. If only she had had more funds to do it with she’d have defeated Frieda in spite of all her slyness and all K.’s folly. And it began so well. She had found out the few skills you had to master and the things you had to know in advance.
As soon as she began work in the bar she was quite at home there. No one missed Frieda. It was only on the second day that some of the guests asked what had become of her. There were no mistakes, the landlord was satisfied, he had been so anxious on the first day that he was in and out of the bar all the time, later he came only now and then, and in the end, since the takings were right—in fact the bar was taking on average a little more money than in Frieda’s time—he left everything to Pepi. She introduced innova-tions. Frieda had supervised everyone strictly, not out of industry but out of avarice, out of her desire to dominate and her fear of let-ting someone else have any of her rights, she supervised even the servants, at least in part, especially when someone was watching. Pepi, on the other hand, left that work entirely to the cellar lads, who were much better suited to it. That meant she had more time for the gentlemen’s rooms, the guests were served quickly, and she could exchange a few words with someone, not like Frieda, who apparently kept herself entirely for Klamm, and considered every word or approach from someone else an insult to him. That was clever too, to be sure, for if she ever did let someone approach her it was an unheard-of favour. But Pepi hated such tricks, and you can’t use them to start with in a job either. Pepi was friendly to everyone, and everyone was friendly to her in return. They were all obviously glad of the change; when those tired, overworked gentlemen can finally sit over their beer for a while, you can positively transform them with a word, a glance, a shrug of your shoulders. Everyone liked to run his hands through Pepi’s curls, she probably had to tidy her hair ten times a day; no one could resist the allure of those curls and the bows in her hair, not even K., who usually noticed nothing much. So those exciting, hard-working but successful days flew by. If only they hadn’t flown so fast, if only there had been more of them left! Four days are not enough, when you’re working yourself to the bone, per-haps the fifth day would have done the trick, but four days were too few.
Pepi had indeed won friends and patrons in those four days, if she could trust the glances of all eyes she had been positively swim-ming in a sea of goodwill as she walked around with the beer tank-ards. A clerk called Bratmeier is crazy about her, she says, he gave her this chain and locket with his picture in the locket, which was certainly very bold of him—this, that, and the other had happened, but it was still only four days. In four days, if Pepi had put her mind to it, Frieda could have been almost if not entirely forgotten, and she would have been forgotten too, perhaps even earlier, if she hadn’t made sure to keep people talking about her by creating such a scan-dal. It had made her interesting to them again, they wanted to see her merely out of curiosity; what had become dreadfully dreary had fresh interest because of K., to whom they were otherwise entirely indif-ferent, they wouldn’t have lost interest in Pepi because of that, not while she was standing here physically present to them, but the gen-tlemen are mostly elderly and set in their ways, it takes them some time to get used to a new barmaid, however much the change is for the better, but it will take a few days, even if it’s against the gentle-men’s real will it’s going to take a few days, perhaps only five, but four are not enough, Pepi still seemed like the temporary barmaid in spite of everything. And then there was perhaps the greatest of mis-fortunes; in those four days Klamm, although he had been in the village for the first two of them, had not come down to the guest-room next door. If he had come, that would have been a crucial test for Pepi, and a test she didn’t fear at all, indeed she was looking for-ward to it. She would not—to be sure, it is better not to put such things into words—she would not have become Klamm’s lover, and would never have told lies elevating herself to such a position, but she would at least have been able to put the beer glass on the table just as nicely as Frieda, she would have said a nice ‘Good-day’, with-out any of Frieda’s pushy manner, and she would have taken her leave prettily too, and if Klamm was looking for anything at all in a girl’s eyes, well, he’d have found it in Pepi’s to his full satisfaction.
But why didn’t he come? Was it pure chance? Pepi had thought so at the time. She was expecting him at any moment during those first two days, she waited for him to appear at night too. Now Klamm will arrive, she kept on thinking, pacing up and down for no reason other than the agitation of waiting and the wish to be the first to see him come in. This constant disappointment tired her out, and perhaps for that reason she didn’t achieve as much as she could have done. When she had a little time she stole out into the corridor that the staff were strictly forbidden to enter, huddled in a niche there, and waited. If only Klamm would come now, she thought, if only I could take that gentleman out of his room myself and carry him down to the guest-room in my arms. I wouldn’t collapse under the burden, how-ever great it was. But he didn’t come. It’s so quiet in those corridors upstairs, Pepi said, you can’t imagine how quiet if you haven’t been there. It’s so quiet that you can’t stand it for long, the silence drives you away. But again and again, driven away ten times, Pepi climbed up there again ten times. There was no point in it. If Klamm wanted to come down he would come, and if he didn’t want to come down
