Marie (Part VII)

Feeling cash, Marika satisfied herself buying something new to wear, because she had only one dress, a pair of shoes and some jacket. After all she came here for just one day. 

Thankfully because of the heat with great joy she walked around the house with nothing on except eventually one of my much too large bathrobes, but when we had to go somewhere further, problems started. 

I thought about Leo, with whom we arranged to meet at ten in the morning the next day. We were there punctually and when Leo showed her all his wares, which took up two large rooms, Marika simply fell into amok. 

I sat with Leo in the kitchen and she went crazy among the clothes, every now and then coming in in something else and asking if it was pretty and if she looked good in it. 

It ended up, of course, that despite a large discount offered by Leo, she spent every last cent of her, or actually her father’s, money, comforted that she hadn’t hit rock bottom. She did not need comforting now because I’d never seen her so happy. 

In two wonderful white, US NAVY mariner’s sacks borrowed from Leo we brought all her new outfits home. We unloaded them immediately on the unused guest couch. While I had been trying to make the so-called big money, for some time I fruitlessly occupied myself with recycling and selling large format crystal mirrors, and was left with three big pieces which I kept in my house. 

Each one was more or less the same size and placed upright they almost reached the ceiling. One was placed in the postage stamp hallway, across from the doors to the room, the second in the bathroom across from the tub, and the third, most grandly, next to the day bed. These mirrors gave the appearance of more space in this quite small apartment. 

For the next few days Marika was busy primarily with herself, constantly in front of the mirrors trying on a succession of different shoes, dresses, whites and accessories. 

To this time she did not imagine at all that in this horrible, gray and sad country could function such an institution as Leo, to whom I took her and from whom she could buy such revelational American, French and English creations, of which she never dreamed. 

I noticed though unfortunately that this whole excitation of clothing lowered her interest in sex, on which she not so long ago had concentrated on.