The Black Obelisk (14 page)

Arthur sells him the gift edition in leather with gold edges. Gratified by the sale he returns. "How would you like something classical? Second hand of course!"

I shake my head and point silently at a book I have found in the meantime on the display table. It is called
 
The Man of the World
,
a Breviary of Good Manners for All Walks of Life
.
 
Patiently I wait for the inescapable, shallow jokes about fakir-cavaliers and the like. But Arthur cracks no jokes. "A useful book nowadays," he tells me earnestly. "It should come out in a large, cheap edition. Well then, we're quits, eh?"

"Not quite. You still owe me something." I lift a thin volume—Plato's
 
Symposium
.
 
"I'll take this too."

Arthur does some mental arithmetic. "It doesn't quite come out, but all right. We'll call the
 
Symposium
 
second hand."

I have him wrap up the
 
Breviary of Good Manners
,
 
for I would not for the world be caught with it. Nevertheless, I determine to study it that very night. A little polish harms no one, and Erna's contemptuous comments still ring in my ears. The war made savages of us, but today one can only afford coarse manners if one has a thick wallet to make up for them. That, however, is something I do not have.

Full of contentment I step out into the street. The uproar of existence greets me instantly. Willy roars by in a fiery red town car, without seeing me. I press the breviary for men of the world firmly under my arm. Forward into life! I think. Here's to earthly love! Away with dreams! Away with ghosts! That goes for Erna as well as for Isabelle. As for my soul, I still have Plato.

The Altstädter Hof is an inn frequented by wandering actors, gypsies, and carters. On the second floor there are a dozen rooms for rent and behind there is a large room with a piano and gymnastic equipment where variety artists can practice their numbers. The chief business, however, is the bar. It not only serves as a meeting place for traveling actors but is frequented by the underworld of the town as well.

I open the door to the back room. Renée de la Tour is standing beside the piano practicing a duet. In the background a man with a bamboo cane is training two white spitzes and a poodle. To the right two muscular women are lying on a mat smoking. And on the trapeze, her feet inserted beneath the bar and between her hands, her back thrust through, Gerda Schneider swings at me like the winged figurehead of a galleon.

The two muscular women are in bathing suits. As they loll about, their muscles play. No doubt they are the lady wrestlers on the program of the Altstädter Hof. Renée roars good evening to me in a first-class drill sergeant's voice and comes over. The dog trainer whistles. The dogs throw somersaults in the air. Gerda whishes smoothly back and forth on the trapeze, reminding me of the moment in the Red Mill when she looked up at me from between her legs. She is wearing black tights and has a red cloth knotted around her hair.

"She's practicing," Renée explains. "She wants to go back to the circus."

"The circus?" I look at Gerda with new interest. "Was she ever in the circus?"

"Of course. She grew up there. But the circus went broke. It couldn't go on paying for the lions' meat."

"Was she in the lion act?"

Renée laughs like a sergeant major and looks at me mockingly. "That would be exciting, wouldn't it? No, she was an acrobat."

Gerda whooshes over us again. She looks at me with staring eyes as though she wanted to hypnotize me. But she is not seeing me at all; her eyes stare from exertion.

"Is Willy really rich?" Renée de la Tour asks.

"I believe he is. What people call rich today. He has various enterprises and a pile of stocks that go up every day. Why?"

"I like men to be rich." Renée gives her soprano laugh. "All women like that," she roars then as though on the drill field.

"I've noticed that," I tell her bitterly. "A rich profiteer is better than a poor but honest employee."

Renée shakes with laughter. "Wealth and honesty don't go together, baby! Not these days! Probably they never did."

"Only if you inherit it or win it in a lottery."

"Not even then. Money ruins character, don't you know that?"

"I know. But then why do you consider it so important?"

"Because I don't care about character," Renée chirps in a prim, old-maid's voice. "I love comfort and security."

Gerda whirls toward us in a perfect
 
salto
.
 
She comes to rest half a yard in front of me, rocking back and forth on her toes and laughing. "Renée is lying," she says.

"Did you hear what we were saying?"

"All women lie," Renée says in her angel's voice. "When they don't they're not worth bothering about"

"Amen," the dog trainer replies.

Gerda smooths back her hair. "I'm through here. Wait till I change."

She goes to a door marked Dressing Room. Ren£e looks after her. "She's pretty," she remarks impartially. "Look how she carries herself. She walks properly, and that's the most important thing in a woman. Bottom in, not out. Acrobats learn how."

"I heard that once before," I say. "From a connoisseur of women and granite. How do you walk properly?"

"When you feel as if you were holding a five-mark piece with your tail—and then forget about it."

I try to picture that and fail. It has been too long since I have seen a five-mark piece. But I know a woman who can yank a fair-sized nail out of the wall that way. She is Frau Beckmann, the girl friend of Karl Brill, the shoemaker. She's 
a powerful woman, made of iron. Karl Brill has won many a bet on her, and I myself have had an opportunity
 
to
 
admire her act. A nail is driven into the workshop wall, not too deep, of course, but deep enough so that it would take a good jerk by hand to pull it out. Then Karl goes to awaken Frau Beckmann. She appears among the drinkers in the shop wearing a light dressing gown, sober, serious, and matter-of-fact. A little cotton is wound around the head of the nail so she won't hurt herself, then Frau Beckmann takes up her position behind a low screen with her back to the wall, leaning slightly forward, her dressing gown discreetly wrapped around her, her hands resting on the screen. She maneuvers a little to get hold of the nail with her hams, suddenly tenses, straightens up, then relaxes—and the nail falls to the floor. Usually a little chalk trickles after it. Without a word or any sign of triumph Frau Beckmann turns around, disappears up the stairs, and Karl Brill collects the bets from his astounded drinking companions. It is strictly a sporting event; no one looks upon Frau Beckmann's performance from any but a purely professional point of view. And no one ventures a loose word about it. She would beat his head in. She is as strong as a giant; the two lady wrestlers are anemic children by comparison.

"Well, make Gerda happy," Renée says laconically. "For two weeks. Simple, isn't it?"

I stand there, somewhat embarrassed. The vade mecum for high society assuredly contains no rules for such a situation. Fortunately Willy appears. He is elegantly dressed and has a Borsalino on the side of his head; nevertheless, he looks like a cement block draped with artificial flowers. With a courtly gesture he kisses Renée's hand, then reaches in his pocket and brings out a small jewel box. "For the most fascinating woman in Werdenbrück," he announces with a bow.

Renée emits a small, soprano scream and looks at Willy incredulously. Then she opens the box. A gold ring set with an amethyst sparkles up at her. She puts it on the middle finger of her left hand, stares at it in rapture and then throws her arms around Willy. Willy stands there very proud and smiling, listening to the trills and the bass; in her excitement Renée can't keep control of them. "Willy!" she chirps, and then thunders, "I am so happy!"

Gerda comes out of the dressing room in a bathrobe. She has heard the scream and wants to know what's happening. "Get ready, children," Willy says. "We'll be on our way."

The two girls disappear. "Couldn't you have given Renée the ring later on when you were alone, you show-off?" I ask. "What am I to do now about Gerda?"

Willy breaks into good-natured laughter. "Damn it all, I never thought about that! What can we do? Come along and have dinner with us."

"So that all four of us can spend our time staring at Renée's amethyst? Not on your life."

"Listen to me," Willy says. "Things are not the same with Renée and me as with Gerda and you. I am serious. Believe it or not, I'm crazy about Renée. Seriously crazy. She's a magnificent creature!"

We sit down in two old cane chairs by the wall. The white spitzes are now practicing walking on their front legs. "Imagine," Willy explains. "It's her voice that drives me crazy. At night it's fabulous. As though you have two different women. First a tender one and a minute later a fishwife. And it goes farther than that. When it's dark and she cuts loose with that drill sergeant's voice of hers, cold shivers run up my back. It's damned odd. I'm not a pansy, but sometimes I feel as if I were defiling a general or that bastard Sergeant Flümer, who used to make life miserable for us when we were recruits. It's only for an instant and then everything's straight again, but—you understand what I mean?"

"More or less."

"All right, so she has me hooked. I want her to stay here. I'm going to fix up a little home for her."

"Do you think she'll give up her profession?"

"She doesn't need to. Once in a while she can accept an engagement. I'll go with her. My business is movable."

"Why don't you marry her? You're rich enough."

"Marriage is something else again," Willy explains. "How can you marry a woman who's capable at any minute of roaring at you like a general? You can't help jumping to attention when that happens unexpectedly; that's something in our blood. No, someday I'll marry a calm plump little thing who is a first-class cook. Renée, my boy, is the typical mistress."

I look with admiration at this man of the world. He smiles in a superior fashion.
The
 
Breviary of Good Manners
 
is superfluous for him. I forego wisecracks. Wit wears thin against someone able to give amethyst rings. The lady wrestlers get up lazily and try a couple of holds. Willy looks at them with interest. "Capital women," he whispers to me like a first lieutenant of the Kaiser's time.

"What's the matter with you? Attention! Eyes right!" a resonant voice roars behind us.

Willy jumps. It is Renée, exhibiting her ring and smiling. "See now what I mean?" Willy asks.

I see it all right. The two leave. Outside, Willy's car is waiting, the red town car with leather upholstery. I'm glad Gerda is taking longer to dress. At least she won't see that car. I wonder what I can offer her tonight. The only thing I have besides the breviary for men of the world is tickets for Eduard Knobloch's restaurant—and they unfortunately aren't valid in the evening. I decide to try them, nevertheless, and to pretend to Eduard that they are the last two.