The Black Obelisk (31 page)

Herbert belches noisily. A stinging exhalation almost brings tears to my eyes. "All right, so it's before your rest," I say. "Aren't you ashamed? What was the occasion? Gaiety, solemnity, irony, or just desperation?"

"A founders' day," Herbert says. "Yes, a founders' day celebration," he repeats complacently. "My induction into a club. I had to entertain the executive committee." He looks at me for a while and then bursts out triumphantly: "The Veteran Riflemen's Association! You understand?"

I understand. Herbert Scherz is a collector of clubs. Other people collect postage stamps or war mementos—Herbert collects clubs. He is already a member of more than a dozen —not because he needs so much entertainment but because he is passionately interested in death and in elegant funerals. It is his ambition to have, some day, the most stylish funeral in the city. Since he cannot leave enough money for that, and no one else would pay for it, he has hit on the idea of joining every possible club. He knows that when a member dies the club provides a ribboned wreath, and that's his first goal. Besides, a delegation always follows the hearse with the club's flag, and he counts on that likewise, He has figured that with his present memberships he is already sure of two cars full of wreaths, and that's not by any means all. He is just sixty and his plenty of time to join more clubs. Of course he is a member of Bobo Ledderhose's singing club, without ever having sung a note. He is an interested inactive member of it, just as he is of the Springerheil Chess Club, the All-Nine Bowling Club, and the Aquatic and Terrestrial Pterophyllum Scalare Club. I introduced him to the Aquatic Club because I thought he would give us an advance order for his tombstone in return. He did not So now he has managed to get into a riflemen's club. "Were you ever a soldier?" I ask.

"What need? I am a member, that's enough. A capital stroke, eh? When Schwarzkopf hears about it he'll die of rage."

Schwarzkopf is Herbert's rival. Two years ago he found out about Herbert's hobby and, as a joke, declared that he would make it a contest. Scherz took the joke so seriously that Schwarzkopf was delighted and actually joined a few clubs just to see Herbert's reaction. Presently, however, he was caught in his own net, and now he, too, has become a collector—not so openly as Scherz, but secretly and roundabout—a kind of underhanded opponent, who gives Scherz a great deal of concern.

"It takes a lot to disturb Schwarzkopf," I say to annoy Herbert.

"This will do it! This time it's not just the wreath and the club flag—my fellow members will be in uniform—"

"Uniforms are forbidden," I say mildly. "We lost the war, Herr Scherz, have you overlooked that fact? You should have joined the police club; they're still allowed uniforms."

I see Scherz making a mental note of the police idea, and I shall not be surprised if in a couple of months he appears as an inactive member of the Trusty Handcuff. At the moment he deals firmly with my skepticism. "Before I die uniforms will long since have been allowed again! Otherwise what would become of our national dignity? People can't keep us slaves forever!"

I look at the swollen face with its burst veins. Strange how people's ideas about slavery differ! The closest I ever came to slavery was as a recruit in uniform. "Besides," I say, "when a civilian dies they won't appear in dress uniform with helmets, sabers, and high boots. That's only for those on active service."

"For me too! It was specifically promised me last night! By the president himself!"

"Promised! What are promises when people have been drinking?"

Herbert appears not to have heard me. "Not only that," he whispers in demoniac triumph. "In addition there will be the most important thing of all: the salvo over my grave!"

I laugh in his dissipated face. "A salvo? With what? Soda-water bottles? Firearms are forbidden in our beloved fatherland! The Treaty of Versailles, Herr Scherz. Your salvo is wishful thinking. Forget it!"

But Herbert is not to be dismayed. He shakes his head slyly. "You have no idea! We've had a secret army for a long time! A black Reichswehr." He giggles. "I'll get my salvo all right! In a couple of years we'll have everything back again anyway. Universal military training and an army. How else are we to live?"

The wind brings the sharp smell of mustard around the corner, and suddenly the river below us throws a silver reflection across the street. The sun has risen. Scherz sneezes. "Schwarzkopf is finally beaten," he says complacently. "The president has promised me he will never be admitted to the club."

"He can Join an artillerymen's club," I reply. "Then a cannon will be fired over his grave."

For a moment Scherz's right eye quivers nervously. Then he dismisses the idea. "That's a joke. There's only one shooting club in the city. No, Schwarzkopf is done for. I'll come by tomorrow and have a look at your monuments. Someday or other I'll have to make up my mind."

He has been making up his mind as long as I have been in the business. He is a perpetual Frau Niebuhr, wandering from us to Hollmann and Klotz, and from there to Stein-meyer, insisting on seeing everything, bargaining for hours, and buying nothing. We are used to such types; there are always people, mostly women, who derive a strange satisfaction from ordering their coffins, shrouds, cemetery lots, and monuments while they're still alive—but Herbert has become a world's champion at it. He finally bought his cemetery lot six months ago. It is sandy, high, dry, and has a nice view. Herbert will decay there somewhat more slowly and respectably than in the lower, moister parts of the cemetery, and he is proud of it. Every Sunday afternoon he goes out there with a Thermos of coffee, a folding stool, and a package of sugar cookies to enjoy quiet hours watching the ivy grow. But he still dangles the order for the monument in front of the snouts of the tombstone firms like a rider dangling a carrot in front of his donkey. We gallop after it but we never get it. Herbert cannot make up his mind. He is afraid he may miss some marvelous novelty, like an electric bell or a telephone in the coffin.

I look at him with distaste. He has paid me back for the cannon fast enough. "Haven't you anything new?" he asks condescendingly.

"Nothing that would interest you—aside from—but that's already as good as sold," I say, with the sudden inspiration of anger and a quick stirring of my business instinct

Herbert bites. "What?"

"Nothing for you. Something absolutely magnificent. But as good as sold."

"What is it?"

"A mausoleum. A very important work of art. Schwarzkopf is extremely interested—"

Scherz laughs. "I know that salesman's trick. Try another."

"No. Not with an object like this. Schwarzkopf wants to use it as a kind of post-mortem clubhouse. He is already thinking of making arrangements in his will for a small, intimate yearly gathering there on the anniversary of his death. Then it will be like a new funeral every year. The room in the mausoleum is perfect for it, with its benches and stained glass. After each celebration a small collation can be served. Hard to beat, isn't it? A perpetual memorial service; no one will pay the slightest attention to the other graves!"

Scherz laughs again, but more thoughtfully. I let him laugh. Between vis the sun casts weightless bands of pale ,silver from the river. Scherz stops. "So, you have a mausoleum like that?" he says, with the slight concern of the true collector who fears that a great opportunity may be missed.

"Forget it! It is as good as sold to Schwarzkopf. Look at the ducks on the river instead! What colors!"

"I don't like ducks. They taste too gamey. Well, I'll be around sometime to look at your mausoleum."

"Don't hurry. You'd better see it in its proper setting, after Schwarzkopf has had it installed."

Scherz laughs again, but this time rather hollowly. I laugh too. Neither of us believes the other, but each has swallowed the bait. He has swallowed Schwarzkopf, and I the possibility that this time I may catch him at last. The mausoleum is the one Frau Niebuhr ordered. She suddenly doesn't want it any more and refuses to pay. Maybe Herbert will buy it now.

I walk on. From the Alstadter Hof comes the smell of tobacco and stale beer. I wander through the gateway into the back courtyard of the inn. It is a picture of peace. The casualties of Saturday night, dead to the world, are lying there in the early sunlight. Flies buzz about in the stertorous breath of the kirsch drinkers, Steinhager drinkers, and corn drinkers as though in aromatic trade winds from the Spice Islands; above the sleeping faces spiders climb up and down like trapeze artists, webs suspended from the wild grapevine, and a beetle is exercising in the mustache of a gypsy as though in a bamboo grove. There it is, I think—at least in sleep—the lost paradise, universal brotherhood!

I look up at Gerda's window. It is open.

"Help!" one of the figures on the ground murmurs suddenly. He says it calmly, softly, and with resignation—he does not shout, and it is just this that strikes me like an ethereal blow from some other-worldly creature. It is a weightless blow on the breast, which pierces me like an X ray, and yet robs me of breath. Help! I think. What else do we cry, audibly and inaudibly, all the time?

Mass is over. The Mother Superior gives me my honorarium. It is not worth keeping, but I cannot refuse it, for that would offend her. "1 have sent you a bottle of wine for breakfast," she says. "We have nothing else to give you. But we pray for you."

"Thank you," I reply. "But how do you happen to have this excellent wine? It must be expensive."

A smile spreads over the Mother Superior's wrinkled, ivory-tinted face; she has the bloodless skin of those who live in cloisters, penitentiaries, and hospitals, and those who work in mines. "It's given to us. There's a devout wine dealer in the city. His wife was here for a long time. Now he sends us several cases each year."

I do not pause to ask why he sends them. I have remembered that Bodendiek, that warrior of God, also has breakfast after mass, and I rush off to rescue some of the wine.

The bottle is, of course, already half empty. Wernicke is there too, but he is only drinking coffee. "The bottle, out of which you have so generously helped yourself," I say to Bodendiek, "was sent to me personally by the Mother Superior as a part of my salary."

"I know," the vicar replies. "But aren't you the apostle of tolerance, you cheerful atheist? Don't begrudge your friends a drop or two. A whole bottle at breakfast would be very bad for you."

I make no reply. The churchman takes this for weakness and instantly moves to the attack. "How's your fear of life doing?" he asks, taking a hearty swallow.

"What?"

"The fear of life that oozes out of all your bones like—"

"Like ectoplasm," Wernicke throws in helpfully.

"Like sweat," says Bodendiek, who does not trust the man of science.

"If I were afraid of life, I would be a devout Catholic," I answer, pulling the bottle toward me.

"Nonsense! If you were a devout Catholic, you would have no fear of life."

"That is the famous hair-splitting of the Church fathers."

Bodendiek laughs. "What do you know about the exquisite intellectuality of our Church fathers, you young barbarian?"

"Enough to have stopped reading when I came to their argument over whether Adam and Eve had navels. The fight lasted for years."

Wernicke grins. Bodendiek makes a disgusted face. "Cheap ignorance, joining hands as usual with crass materialism," he says to us both.

"You oughtn't to be so contemptuous of science," I reply. "What would you do if you had acute appendicitis and the only surgeon within reach was an atheist? Would you pray or let the heathen operate?"

"Both, you novice at dialectic; it would give the heathen an opportunity to gain merit in the sight of God."

"You really oughtn't to let a doctor treat you at all," I say. "If it is God's will, then you should just die and not try to change it."

Bodendiek waves this aside. "Now we'll soon come to the question of free will and the omnipotence of God. Ingenious sophomores think they can use that to refute the whole teaching of the Church."

He gets up benevolently. His face is glowing with health. Wernicke and I look peaked by comparison with this blooming believer. "A benediction on our meal!" he says. "Now I must go to my other parishioners."

No one comments on the word "other." He rustles out. "Have you ever noticed that priests and generals usually attain a good old age?" I ask Wernicke. "The tooth of doubt and care does not gnaw at them. They are in the open air a great deal, hold their jobs for life, and are not obliged to think. The one has his catechism, the other his army manual. That keeps them young. Besides, both enjoy great respect. One is in God's court, the other in the Kaiser's."

Wernicke lights a cigarette. "Have you noticed, too, what an advantage the vicar has in argument?" I ask. "We have to respect bis faith, he doesn't have to respect our lack of it."