The Black Obelisk (44 page)

"What are the movie actresses up to—Henny Porten, Erika Morena, and the incomparable Lia de Putti?" I ask.

"They have the same problems we do!" Georg explains. "To turn their money into commodities as fast as possible—cars, furs, tiaras, dogs, houses, stocks, and film productions—only it's easier for them than for us."

He glances lovingly at a picture of a Hollywood party. It is a ball of incomparable elegance. The gentlemen are wearing tuxedos like Georg's or tails. "When are you going to get a dress suit?" I ask.

"After I've been to my first ball in this tuxedo. I'll skip off to Berlin for that! For three days! Some time when the inflation is over and money is money again and not water. Meanwhile, I'm making preparations, as you see."

"You still need patent-leather shoes," I say, irritated to my own surprise at this self-satisfied man of the world.

Georg takes the gold twenty-mark piece out of his vest pocket, tosses it into the air, catches it, and puts it back without a word. I watch him with gnawing envy. There he sits, with no cares to speak of, in his vest pocket a cigar that will not taste like gall, as Wernicke's Brazilian did, across the street lives Lisa, who is infatuated with him simply because his family were businessmen when her father was a day laborer. She idolized him when he was a child wearing a white collar and a sailor cap on his curls while she traipsed about in a dress made from one of her mother's old skirts—and this admiration has endured. Georg need do nothing more; his glory is secure. I don't believe Lisa even knows he is bald —for her he is still the merchant prince in a sailor suit.

"You're lucky," I say.

"I deserve to be," Georg replies, closing the copies of the reading circle
Modernitas
.
Then he takes a box of sprats from the window seat and points to a half-loaf and a piece of butter. "How about a simple supper and a glance at the night life of a medium-sized city?"

They are the same sort of sprats that made my mouth water when I saw them in the store in Grossestrasse. Now I can't bear the sight of them. "You amaze me," I say. "Why are you eating here? Why aren't you dining on caviar and sea food in the former Hotel Hohenzollera, now the Reichs-hof?"

"I love contrast," Georg replies. "How else could I exist, a tombstone dealer in a small city with a yearning for the great world?"

He stands in full splendor at the window. Suddenly from across the street conies a husky cry of admiration. Georg turns full face, his hands in his trouser pockets to show the white vest to full advantage. Lisa dissolves, as far as that is possible for her. She draws her kimono around her, executes a kind of Arabian dance, unwraps herself, suddenly stands naked and dark, silhouetted in front of her lamp, throws the kimono on again, puts the lamp at her side and is once more like a gardenia in her greedy mouth. Georg accepts this homage like a pasha and grants me a eunuch's share. In a single moment he has consolidated for years to come the position of the lad in the sailor suit who so impressed the tattered girl. Tuxedos are nothing new to Lisa, who is at home among the profiteers in the Red Mill; but Georg's, of course is something entirely different. Pure gold. "You're lucky," I say again. "And how easy! Riesenfeld could burst a blood vessel, compose poems, and ruin his granite works without accomplishing what you have done by just being a mannequin."

Georg nods. "It's a secret! But I'll reveal it to you. Never do anything complicated when something simple will serve as well. It's one of the most important secrets of living. Very hard to apply. Especially for intellectuals and romanticists."

"Anything more?"

"No. But don't pose as an intellectual Hercules when a pair of new trousers will produce the same result. You won't irritate your partner and she won't have to exert herself to follow you; you remain calm and relaxed, and what you want will fall, figuratively speaking, into your lap."

"Be careful not to get grease on your silk lapels," I say. "Sprats are drippy."

"You're right," Georg takes off his coat. "One must never press one's luck. Another important rule."

He reaches once more for the sprats. "Why don't you write mottos for a calendar company?" I inquire bitterly of that cheerful purveyor of worldly wisdom. "It's a shame to waste them on the universe at large."

"I present them to you. For me they're a stimulus, not platitudes. Anyone who is melancholy by nature and has to work at a business like mine must do all he can to cheer himself up and mustn't be choosy about it. Another maxim."

I see that I cannot get the better of him and withdraw into my room as soon as the box of sprats is empty. But even there I can find no relief—not even at the piano, because of the dead or dying sergeant major—and as for funeral marches, the only possible thing to play, I have enough of them in my head as it is.

In the window of old Knopfs bedroom a ghost suddenly rises. The sun, striking the panes of our window keeps me for a time from recognizing the sergeant major. So he is still alive and has dragged himself from his bed to the window. His gray head protrudes woodenly from his gray nightgown. "Just look," I say to Georg. "He doesn't intend to die between sheets. Theold war horse is going to have a last look at the Werdenbrück Distilleries."

We gaze at him. His mustache hangs in a sorry tangle over his mouth. His eyes are leaden. He stares out for a while, then turns away.

"That was his last look," I say. "How touching that even such a soulless slave driver should want to gaze at the world once more before leaving it forever. A theme for Hunger-mann, the poet of social consciousness."

"He's taking a second look," Georg replies.

I abandon the Presto mimeographing machine, on which I have been turning out catalogue pages for our salesmen, and go back to the window. The sergeant major is standing there again. Beyond the sun-struck pane I see him raise something to his lips and drink. "His medicine!" I say. "To think that even the most hopeless wreck still clings to life! Another theme for Hungermann."

"That's not medicine," Georg replies, who has sharper eyes than mine. "Medicine doesn't come in schnaps bottles."

"What?"

We open our window. The reflection disappears, and I see that Georg is right: old Knopf is unmistakably drinking out of a schnaps bottle. "What a good idea!" I say. "His wife has filled a schnaps bottle with water so it will be easier for him to drink. There's no liquor in his room, you know; everything has been thoroughly searched."

Georg shakes his head. "If that was water he'd have hurled the bottle out of the window long ago. For as long as I've known the old man he's only used water for washing—and grudgingly at that. What he has there is schnaps; he has kept it hidden somewhere in spite of the search, and you, Ludwig, have before you the edifying spectacle of a man courageously going to meet his fate. The old sergeant major intends to fall on the field of honor with his hand at the enemy's throat."

"Oughtn't we to call his wife?"

"Do you think she could take the bottle away from him?"

"No."

"The doctor has only given him a few days at best. What difference does it make?"

"The difference between a Christian and a fatalist Herr Knopf!" I shout. "Sergeant Major!"

I don't know whether he has heard me—but he makes a gesture as though waving to us with the bottle. Then he puts it to his mouth again. "Herr Knopf!" I shout. "Frau Knopf!"

'Too late!" Georg says.

Knopf has lowered the bottle. He makes another circular motion with it. We wait for him to collapse. The doctor has declared that a single drop of alcohol will be fatal. After a while he fades backward into the room like a corpse sinking beneath the water. "A fine death," Georg says.

"Oughtn't we to tell the family?"

"Leave them in peace. The old man was a pest. They'll be happy that it's all over."

"I don't know; attachment sometimes takes strange forms. They could get his stomach pumped out."

"He'd fight that so hard he'd get a stroke. But telephone the doctor if your conscience is bothering you. Hirshmann."

I reach the doctor. "Old Knopf has just drunk a small bottle of schnaps," I say. "We saw it from our window."

"In one gulp?"

"In two, I believe. What has that to do with it?"

"Nothing. It was just curiosity. May he rest in peace."

"Isn't there anything to be done?"

"Nothing," Hirshmann says. "He'd have died anyway. As a matter of fact, I'm surprised he held out till today. Give him a tombstone in the shape of a bottle."

"You're a heartless man," I say.

"Not heartless, cynical. You ought to know the difference! Cynicism is heart with a minus sign, if that's any comfort to you. Have a drink in memory of the departed schnaps thrush."

I put down the telephone. "Georg," I say, "I believe it's really high time I changed my profession. It coarsens one too much."

"It doesn't coarsen, it only dulls the sensibilities."

"Even worse. It's not the thing for a member of the Werdenbrück Poets' Club. What becomes of our profound wonder, horror, and reverence in the face of death when one measures it in money or in monuments?"

"There's enough left," Georg says. "But I understand what you mean. Now let's go to Eduard's and drink a silent toast to the old twelve-pointed stag."

In the afternoon we return. An hour later screams and cries resound from Knopf's house. "Peace to his ashes," Georg says. "Come on, we must go over and speak the customary words of comfort."

"I only hope they all have their mourning clothes ready. That's the one comfort they need at this moment."

The door is unlocked. We open it without ringing and stop short. An unexpected picture greets us. Old Knopf is standing in the room, his walking stick in his hand, dressed and ready to go out. His wife and daughters are cowering behind the three sewing machines. Knopf is screeching with rage and striking at them with his cane. Grasping the neck of the nearest sewing machine with one hand for a firm stance, he rains blows with the other. They are not very heavy blows, but Knopf is doing the best he can. Round him on the floor lie the mourning clothes.

It's easy to see what has happened. Instead of killing him, the schnaps has so enlivened the sergeant major that he has got dressed, probably with the intention of going on his usual round through the inns. Since no one has told him he is sick unto death and his wife has been too terrified of him to summon a priest to prepare him for his passage into blessedness, it has never occurred to Knopf to die. He has already survived a number of attacks and, as far as he is concerned, this is just one more. It is not hard to see why he is enraged—no one enjoys seeing that his family has written him off so completely that they are laying out precious money for mourning weeds.

"Accursed crew!" he screeches. "You were celebrating already, were you? I'll teach you!"

He misses his wife and gives a hiss of rage. She clings to his cane. "But Father, we had to make preparations; the doctor—"

"The doctor is an idiot! Let go of my stick, you devil! Let go, I tell you, you beast!"

The little, roly-poly woman lets the stick go. The hissing drake in front of her swings it and hits one of his daughters. The three women could easily disarm the weak old man, but he has the upper hand, like a sergeant major with his recruits. The daughters are now holding onto the cane and trying tearfully to explain. Knopf will not listen. "Let go of my stick, you devil's brood! Wasting money, throwing it away, I'll teach you!"

The cane is released, Knopf strikes again, misses, and falls forward on one knee. Bubbles of saliva hang in the Nietzsche mustache as he gets up and continues to follow Zara-thustra's precept by beating his harem. "Father, you'll kill yourself if you get so excited!" cry the weeping daughters. "Please be calm! We're overjoyed that you're alive! Shall we make you some coffee?"

"Coffee? I'll make you coffee! I'll beat you to a pulp, that's what I'll do, you devil's brood! Squandering all that money—"

"But Father, we can sell the things!"

"Sell! I'll sell you, you damned spendthrifts—"

"But Father, it hasn't been paid for yet!" screams Frau Knopf in utter despair.

That penetrates. Knopf lets the cane sink. "What's that?"

We step forward. "Heir Knopf," Georg says. "My congratulations!"

"Kiss my ass!" the sergeant major replies. "Can't you see I'm occupied?"

"You are overexerting yourself."

"Well? What's that to you? I'm being ruined by my family here."