The Artificial Silk Girl

It is around midnight when Doris thinks something “wonderful happened inside” (2), which gives her the sense that she needs to write things down in a diary. She feels her life is like a movie and that it’s going to become even more cinematic soon. She is 18 years old. The year is 1931.

Doris is happy because it is the last day of the month and she got paid. She has to give 70 of her 120 Marks to her parents—her adoptive father has been unemployed for some time—but first, she spends 50 Marks on a new hat for herself. It’s forest green with a feather, which matches her new forest green coat with a fox-fur collar, a gift from Käsemann. He had wanted to marry her, but she didn’t reciprocate. She’s too good for the short, stocky type.

Doris is sitting in a café, observing a couple and thinking about her first date with Herr Grönland. She didn’t give in to his advances. She needed a watch. When he dropped her off at her door she mentioned how her watch was still broken. The next night he presented her with a small gold one. Doris returns to looking at the couple in the cafe.