The Black Obelisk (21 page)

"Anyone can say that! Prove it!"

Willy gets up. He is a giant. The music has just stopped. "Prove it?" Willy says. "Here!" He lifts one leg a little, turns his posterior lightly toward the speaker and there is an explosion like a medium-sized cannon. "That," Willy says conclusively, "is all I learned from the Prussians. Formerly I had nicer manners."

The leader of the crowd has sprung back involuntarily. "You said coward, didn't you?" Willy asks grinning. "You seem a little jumpy yourself!"

The host has come up accompanied by three husky waiters. "Quiet, gentlemen, I must insist! No arguments here!"

The orchestra is now playing "Birdsong at Evening." The defenders of the national anthem retire with dark threats. It's possible that they will fall on us outside. We look them over; they're sitting together close to the door. There are about twenty of them. The battle will be pretty hopeless for us.

But suddenly unexpected help arrives. A dried-up little man approaches our table. He is Bodo Ledderhose, a dealer in hides and old iron. We were with him in France. "Children," he says, "I've just noticed what's going on. Am here with my club. Over behind those columns. We're a full dozen

and can give you a hand if those ass-faces want to start anything. Agreed?"

"Agreed, Bodo. You were sent by God."

"Not that. But this is no place for respectable people. We just dropped in for a glass of beer. Unfortunately the host here has the best beer in the city. Otherwise he's an unprincipled asshole."

It strikes me that Bodo is going a bit far to demand principles from so simple a human organ; but it is elevating just the same. In bad times one ought to make impossible demands. "We're going soon," Bodo continues. "Are you?"

"Right away."

We pay and get up. Before we reach the door the guardians of the national anthem are already outside. As though by magic they suddenly have cudgels, stones, and brass knuckles in their hands. They stand in a half-circle in front of the entrance.

Bodo suddenly is between us. He pushes us to one side and his twelve men walk through the door in front of us. "Something you want, you snot faces?" Bodo asks.

The guardians of the Reich stare at us. "Cowards!" says the leader finally, the man who was about to fall on three of us with twenty men. "We'll catch you yet!"

"Very likely," Willy says. "That's why we spent a couple of years in the trenches. But see to it that you always have odds of three or four on your side. Superior force is very reassuring to patriots."

We walk down Grossestrasse with Bodo's club. The sky is full of stars. There are lights in the store windows. Sometimes when you are with wartime comrades it still seems strange and splendid and breathtaking and incomprehensible that you can wander about this way, free and alive. Suddenly I understand what Wernicke meant about thankfulness. It is a thankfulness not directed toward anyone— a simple gratitude at having escaped for a while longer— for eventually, of course, no one really escapes.

"What you need is another café," Bobo says. "How would ours do? We haven't any roaring apes there. Come along, we'll show it to you!"

They show it to us. Downstairs they serve coffee, seltzer water, beer, and ice cream—upstairs are the assembly rooms. Bodo's club is a singing society. The city crawls with clubs, which all have their weekly meetings, their statues and bylaws, and are very serious and self-important. Bodo's club meets Thursdays on the second floor. "We have a good polyphonic male choir," he says. "Only we're a little weak in first tenors. It's a funny thing, but probably a lot of first tenors fell during the war. And the rising generation isn't old enough yet—their voices are just starting to change."

"Willy is a first tenor," I tell him.

"Really?" Bodo looks at him with interest. "Sing this, Willy."

Bodo flutes like a thrush. Willy flutes in turn. "Good material," Bodo says. "Now try this!"

Willy manages the second too. "Join our club," Bodo now urges him. "If you don't like it you can always resign later."

Willy demurs a little, but to our astonishment swallows the bait. He is immediately made treasurer of the club. In return he pays for two rounds of beer and schnaps and adds pea soup and pigs' knuckles for everyone. Bodo's club is politically democratic; but among the first tenors they have a conservative toy dealer and a half-communistic cobbler; one cannot be choosy in the matter of first tenors, there are so few of them. During the third round Willy announces that be knows a lady who can also sing first tenor and bass as well. The members of the society are silent, doubtfully chewing their pigs' knuckles. Georg and I take a hand and explain Renée de la Tour's accomplishments as duettist. Willy swears that she is not really a bass but by nature a pure tenor. There ensues a hugely enthusiastic response. Renée is elected to membership in
absentia
and is thereupon immediately made an honorary member. Willy pays for the necessary drinks. Bodo is dreaming of inserting mysterious soprano parts that will drive the rival sing clubs crazy at the yearly contest because they will think Bodo's club contains a eunuch, especially since Renée will naturally have to appear in male attire since otherwise the club would be classified as a mixed choir. "I'll tell her this very evening," Willy announces. "Children, how she will laugh! In every key!"

Georg and I finally leave. Willy keeps watch over the square from the second-story window; like an old soldier he reckons on the possibility of an ambush by the guardians of the national anthem. But nothing happens. The market square lies peaceful under the stars. Around it the windows of the bars stand open. From Bodo's meeting place come the melodious strains of
"
Wer hat dich, du schöner Wald, aufgebaut so hoch dort oben?
"

"Tell me, Georg," I ask as we turn into Hackenstrasse, "are you happy?"

Georg Kroll lifts his hat to an unseen presence in the night. "I'll ask you another question," he says. "How long can one sit on the point of a needle?"

Rain pours from the sky. Mist streams up from the garden to meet it. The summer is drowned, it is cold, and the dollar stands at a hundred and twenty thousand marks. With a mighty crash a section of our gutter breaks from the roof and falls; water shoots across the window like a wall of gray glass. I sell two angels of bisquit porcelain and a wreath of immortelles to a frail woman whose two children have died of grippe. Georg lies in the next room coughing. He, too, has grippe, but I have fixed a mug of mulled wine for him. Besides, he has a half-dozen magazines lying around and is making use of this chance to inform himself about the latest marriages, divorces, and scandals in the great world of Cannes, Berlin, London, and Paris. The indefatigable Heinrich Kroll comes in wearing striped trousers, bicycle clips, and an appropriate dark raincoat. "Would you mind if I dictated a few orders?" he asks with incomparable sarcasm.

"By no means. Go right ahead."

He gives me the commissions. They are for small tombstones of red granite, a marble plaque, a couple of grave enclosures—the commonplaces of death, nothing special. Then he stands for a time, irresolute, warming his backside at the cold oven, looking at the collection of rock samples that for the past twenty years has been lying on the shelves of the office, and finally bursts into speech. "If difficulties like this are going to be put in my way, it wont be long before we're broke!"

I say nothing, just to annoy him. "Broke, I say," he explains. "And I know what I'm talking about."

"Really?" I look at him encouragingly. "Then why defend yourself? Everyone believes you."

"Defend myself? I don't need to defend myself! But what happened in Wüstringen—"

"Have they found the murderer?"

"Murderer? What's that to us? Why talk about murder in a case like that? It was an accident. The man has only himself to blame! What I'm talking about is the way you treated Mayor Döbbeling! And on top of that to offer the carpenter's widow a tombstone gratis!"

I turn toward the window and gaze into the rain. Heinrich Kroll is one of those people who never have any doubt about their own views—this makes them not only tiresome but dangerous as well. They are the bronze core of our beloved fatherland that makes it possible to keep on starting wars again and again. They are incapable of learning; they are born with their hands at the seams of their trousers and are proud to die that way too. I don't know whether the type exists in other countries—but surely not in such numbers.

After a while I listen again to what the little muttonhead is saying. It seems that he has had a long interview with the mayor and has cleared the matter up. Thanks solely to his personality, we are once more permitted to sell tombstones in Wüstringen.

"And what are we supposed to do now?" I ask him. "Worship you?"

He throws me a venomous glance. "Look out, you'll go too far someday?"

"How far?"

"Too far. Don't forget you're an employee here."

"I forget it all the time. Otherwise you'd have to give me a triple salary—as draftsman, offce manager, and advertising manager. Moreover, we are not on a military footing or you'd have to stand at attention in front of me. But if you like I can always give our competitors a ring—Hollmann and Klotz would take me on instantly."

The door opens and Georg appears in bright red pajamas. "Were you talking about Wüstringen, Heinrich?"

"About what else?"

"Then go down to the cellar and stand in the corner. A man was killed in Wüstringen! A life was ended. Someone's world was destroyed. Every murder, every killing, is the first killing in the world. Cain and Abel repeated again and again! If you and your fellows could only understand that, there'd be fewer battle cries on this otherwise blessed earth!"

"There would be servants and slaves, groveling before the inhuman Treaty of Versailles!"

"The Treaty of Versailles! Of course!" Georg takes a step forward. The smell of mulled wine is strong around him. "If we had won the war, then of course we would have deluged our enemies with love and gifts, wouldn't we? Have you forgotten what you and your friends wanted to annex? The Ukraine, Brie, Longwy, and the whole iron and coal basin of France? Has the Ruhr been taken away from us? No, we still have it! Are you going to maintain that our treaty of peace would not have been ten times harsher if we had been in a position to dictate one? Didn't I myself hear you jabbering about it as recently as 1917? France was to be reduced to a third-rate power, huge slices of Russia were to be annexed, and all enemies were to pay in goods and treasure until they were bled white! That was you, Heinrich! But now you join in the chorus roaring against the injustice that has been done us. Your self-pity and your cries for vengeance are enough to make one sick! Always someone else is to blame, not you. You stink of self-righteousness, you Pharisees! Don't you know that the first mark of a man is that he stands for what he has done? But with you and your fellows it is always some tremendous injustice that has befallen you, and the only difference between you and God is that God knows everything but you know everything better."

Georg glances about as though waking up. His face is now as red as his pajamas and even his bald head is rosy. Hein-rich has recoiled in alarm. Georg follows him. He is furious. Heinrich retreats farther. "Don't come near me!" he screams. "You're blowing your germs right in my face! What would happen if we both had grippe?"

"Then no one would dare die," I say.

The battling brothers make a fine picture. Georg in red satin pajamas, sweating with rage, and Heinrich in his little morning suit, terrified of catching the grippe. There is another witness to the scene: Lisa in a print dressing gown decorated with sailing ships is leaning far out the window in spite of the weather. In Knopfs house the door is open. In front of it the rain hangs like a curtain of glass beads. It is so dark inside that the girls have turned on the light. It would be easy to take them for Wagner's Rhine Maidens swimming there. Under a huge umbrella Wilke, the carpenter, wanders around the courtyard like a black mushroom. Heinrich Kroll disappears, literally pushed out of the office by Georg. "Be sure to gargle," I shout after him. "Grippe is deadly to people of your consititution."

Georg stands still and laughs. "What an idiot I am," he says. "As though you could ever tell people like that anything!"

"Where did you get the pajamas?" I ask. "Have you joined the Communist party?"

Applause comes from across the street. Lisa is expressing her approval of Georg—a serious disloyalty toward Watzek, the loyal National Socialist and future director of the stockyards. Georg bows, his hand on his heart. "Get into bed, you clown," I say. "You've turned into a fountain of sweat!"

"It's healthy to sweat! Just look at the rain! The sky out there is sweating. And across the street that sample of life, in its open dressing gown, with white teeth and full of laughter! What are we doing here? Why don't we explode like fireworks? If we really knew what life is, we would explode! Why am I selling tombstones? Why am I not a comet? Or the great roc, sailing over Hollywood and snatching the most delectable women out of their swimming pools? Why must we live in Werdenbrück and do battle in the Café Central instead of fitting out a caravan for Timbuktu and setting forth with mahogany-colored bearers into the spacious African morning? Why don't we own a bordello in Yokohama? Answer me! It is important to know at once! Why aren't we racing with purple fish in the red evenings of Tahiti? Answer me!"