Inge

Inge is one of the women on the margins of the Zum Goldenen Handschuh, where her imposing body, forceful manner, and conspicuous limp make her difficult to overlook. Her presence helps define the harsh pecking order among the bar’s regulars: she commands attention from Agnes and Hildegart, even as the three women share an existence shaped by poverty and the expectation of an early death.

Identity and Circumstances

Inge appears among a small group of newcomers known as Säberalmas, alongside Agnes and Hildegart. The narrator describes her as an unfinished-looking block of wood, concrete, or granite: her shoulders seem almost delicate beside the heavy, uneven body below them, whose shape resists any neat description. This grotesque physical portrait is part of the bar’s habit of turning people into types, but Inge is not merely a spectacle. She exerts real authority over the women around her and is quick to resent anyone who might disturb their fragile arrangement.

That arrangement rests on material insecurity. Agnes has spent nearly twenty years barricaded in her apartment against the dangers outside; when she is evicted, she ends up on the street and sometimes prostitutes herself when the opportunity arises. Inge and Hildegart get by through small-time scams. They understand that they are likely to die sooner than other people, yet even the time remaining to them feels intolerably long. Inge’s later description of her body supplies another concrete feature of her physical presence: her right leg is shorter than her left, giving her a sweeping, plow-like gait. The mismatch between her imposing bulk and impaired movement makes her entrance feel both forceful and laborious.

Authority, Religion, and the Women Around Her

Inge’s authority over Agnes and Hildegart is expressed less through persuasion than through control of the space they occupy. When Gisela politely asks whether she may sit with them, Agnes would like to agree but is afraid to cross Inge, who dislikes being disturbed and especially resents religious people. Inge treats Gisela’s faith as proof of foolishness: she despises priests, pious women, the Pope, and the Salvation Army, whose members she sees as deluded for believing they can improve anything. She assumes Gisela means to win the others over and wants her gone before she can do so.

When Gisela repeats her request, Hildegart gives an accidental nod, too tired to grasp what is happening. Inge is furious at this small breach of her authority, but instead of striking either woman, she turns to a story about her years at a Catholic girls’ school. She alleges that the nuns did not wash, smelled of urine, and made her climb up their legs and put her finger inside them. The account is both an eruption of sexualized abuse and an attempt to recruit Agnes and Hildegart into Inge’s resentment. Their silence gives her no confirmation; it only makes her angrier.

Inge’s anger widens into a bleak denunciation of their existence. She compares the women to people already in the cemetery, differing only because they are rotting while sitting up, and imagines God as a pig with golden wings hovering over the damage he has made. The grotesque image turns her hostility toward religion into an accusation against a world that permits their degradation. Yet the speech does not bring the others closer: Agnes’s laughter irritates Inge, and the surrounding quiet leaves her with no answer to the contempt she has voiced.

Her control is not effortless. When her cigarettes run out, Inge fears that Gisela will use her absence to draw the weaker women to her side, but she still has to leave to find more. The cigarette machine is broken, forcing her to go elsewhere; her short right leg gives her progress a sweeping, plow-like motion. Her departure gives Gisela a brief opening to speak gently to Agnes, carefully avoiding the pressure that could make Agnes retreat. Agnes is relieved to have a moment away from Inge’s hatred and violence, while Hildegart is too distracted to follow the exchange. Inge returns, but then has to leave again for cigarettes, extending the interval in which Gisela can continue her quiet appeal.

Fiete’s Attention and the Failed Coercion

When Fiete arrives with Herta, he leaves her standing while he approaches Inge, Agnes, and Hildegart. He introduces himself to Agnes, who looks past him without responding. A gaunt regular sits down among the women without invitation; Inge sharply drives him off, and Fiete is impressed by her refusal to be intimidated. He immediately turns that admiration into a sexual scheme: he imagines persuading Inge and Herta to have sex in front of him, and, recalling how women have agreed and then changed their minds, thinks that every detail ought to be put in writing. Herta, who has signed the No Independent Will Declaration and Rule of Obedience, asks Anus what she is allowed to drink. The scene makes the imbalance plain: Fiete treats a woman’s written submission as a guarantee, while Herta still looks to him for permission.

As the evening drags on, Fiete watches Herta struggle to remain standing and delays letting her sit, absorbed instead in fantasies of keeping the women there through the night. He talks crudely about sex and directs a grotesque proposition at Inge, who does not respond as he wants. Later, when Inge gets up to use the toilet and Hildegart follows, Fiete imagines pursuing her into the women’s bathroom, but stays where he is. His fantasy of being overpowered by Inge reverses the balance of power in his imagination; in the actual room, however, he is the one who makes threats. He tells her he could make her stop laughing and start whimpering, then mocks her for not hearing him.

At his apartment, Fiete orders the women to perform a sexual act. Inge refuses outright. When he insists that she begin, she again says no; he strikes her and tears off her clothes so quickly that she is left in her bra and underpants. She is frightened for her life, but asks to use the toilet before complying. Fiete takes this as proof that she has submitted and fails to consider that she might be trying to escape. He puts on Inge’s favorite song, “Es geht eine Träne auf Reisen,” and plays it again when it ends. When he goes to check on her, she is gone. He sits on the sofa, unable to accept that the plan has failed at the last moment once more; Herta has fallen asleep, and the night outside is left in the wake of Inge’s escape.

Narrative Role and Point of View

Inge is presented almost entirely through outward signs: the narrator’s elaborate account of her body and gait, the force of her speech, and the responses she provokes in Agnes, Hildegart, Gisela, and Fiete. The contrast is telling. In the women’s circle, she sets the terms of who may approach and how the others are expected to respond; once Fiete’s attention turns toward her, his imagined version of her overwhelms the account, while her own words and actions remain comparatively spare. The narration gives no comparable access to her thoughts, making the difference between being vividly observed and being understood part of her characterization.

That imbalance also shapes the scene’s ending. Fiete interprets Inge through the role he wants her to play, treating her request to use the toilet as compliance rather than considering that she might leave. Her disappearance overturns his assumption without resolving what she thinks or what happens to her afterward. The episode therefore closes not with a transformation in Fiete’s understanding, but with the gap between his elaborate expectations and Inge’s unrecorded choice.