The Black Obelisk

  "And then?" Frau Niebuhr asks inexorably.

  I wonder whether to tell this heartless devil something about the tomb in the form of a sarcophagus with the lid pushed a little to one side and a skeleton hand reaching out —but I decide against it. Our positions are unequal; she is the buyer and I am the seller; she can torment me, but not the other way about—and perhaps she will buy something after all.

  'That's all for the present."

  Frau Niebuhr waits a moment longer. "If you have nothing more, I must go to Hollmann and Klotz."

  She looks at me with June bug eyes. She has thrown her mourning veil back over her black hat. Now she is waiting for me to make a desperate plea. I do not do it. Instead, I explain coldly, "That will please us very much. It is our principle to draw in the competition so that people can see how capable our firm is. In commissions involving so much sculpture the artist is, of course, extremely important, otherwise you may suddenly have, as happened recently in the case of one of our competitors whose name I should prefer not to mention, an angel with two left feet. Squinting madonnas have turned up, too, and a Christ with eleven fingers. When it was noticed it was already too late."

  Frau Niebuhr brings down her veil like a theater curtain. "I'll be on my guard!"

  I am convinced she will be. She is a greedy connoisseur of her own mourning, drinking it in full draughts. It will be a long time before she places her order; for until she makes up her mind she can torment all the monument builders—but afterward only one, the one on whom she has settled. Now she is something like a footloose bachelor of sorrow—later she will be like a married man who must remain faithful.

  Wilke, the coffinmaker, comes out of his workroom. There are wood shavings hanging in his mustache. In his hand he has a box of appetizing smoked sprats which he is eating with relish.

  "What do you think about life?" I ask him.

  He pauses. "One way in the morning and another in the evening, one way in winter and another in summer, one way before eating and another afterward, and probably one way in youth and another in age."

  "Right. Finally a sensible answer!"

  "All right, if you know the answer why go on asking?"

  "Asking is educational. Besides, I ask one way in the morning and another in the evening, one way in winter and another in summer, and one way before intercourse and another afterward."

  "After intercourse," Wilke says thoughtfully. "Right you are, everything is different then! I had completely forgotten about that."

  I bow before him as though before an abbot. "Congratulations on your asceticism! You have conquered the prick of the flesh already! I wish I were as far advanced!"

  "Nonsense! I'm not impotent! But women are funny when you're a coffinmaker. They get the horrors. Don't want to come into your workroom when there's a coffin there. Not even if you serve Berlin pancakes and port wine."

  "Where do you serve them!" I ask. "On an unfinished coffin? You certainly don't on a polished one; port wine leaves rings."

  "On the bench by the window. You can sit on the coffin. Besides, it isn't even a coffin. It doesn't become a coffin until there's a dead body in it. Until then it's only a piece of carpentry work."

  "Correct. But sometimes it's hard to make the distinction!"

  "It all depends. Once in Hamburg I had a girl who was equal to it. Even enjoyed it. She was keen to try. I filled a coffin half full of those soft white pine shavings that always smell so woodsy and romantic. Everything went fine. We had magnificent fun until we wanted to get out again. Some of the damned glue on the bottom hadn't quite dried, the shavings had been pushed aside and the girl's hair was stuck fast. She pulled a couple of times and then started to scream. She thought it was death who had got hold of her hair. She screamed and screamed, and people came running, including my boss; she was pulled out and I lost my job in a hurry. Too bad—it might have become a beautiful relationship! Life isn't easy for people like us."

  Wilke throws me a despairing glance, then grins briefly and grubs appreciatively in the box without offering it to me. "I've heard of two cases of sprat poisoning," I say. "It's a particularly horrible and lingering death."

  Wilke dismisses the thought. "These are freshly smoked. And very tender. A delicacy. I'll share them with you if you'll get me a nice, unprejudiced girl—like the one in the sweater who sometimes comes to visit you."

  I stare at the coffinmaker. He undoubtedly means Gerda. Gerda for whom I am waiting at this moment. "I'm no procurer," I say sharply. "But I'll give you a piece of advice. Take your women someplace else, not into your workshop."

  "Where would you suggest?" Wilke is picking bones out of his teeth. "That's just the hitch! To a hotel? Too expensive. Besides, there's the danger of police raids. Into the city parks? The police again! Or here in the yard? My shop is better than that."

  "Haven't you an apartment?"

  "My room isn't safe. My landlady is a dragon. Years ago I had an affair with her. In extreme need, you understand. Only for a short time—but even today, after ten years, that bitch is still jealous. All I have left is my shop. Well, how about an office of friendship? Introduce me to the lady in the sweater!"

  I point silently at the empty box of sprats. Wilke throws it into the court and goes to the faucet to wash his paws. "I have a bottle of first-class blended port upstairs," he volunteers.

  "Keep the stuff for your next orgy!"

  "It will turn into ink before that. But there are more sprats where these came from."

  I point to my forehead and go into the office to get a drawing pad and a folding chair so that I can sketch a mau-

  soleum for Frau Niebuhr. I sit down beside the obelisk-there I can listen for-the telephone and at the same time keep an eye on the street and die courtyard. I plan to adorn the drawing of the memorial with this inscription: HERE, AFTER SEVERE AND PROLONGED SUFFERING, LIES MAJOR WOLKENSTEIN, RETIRED. DEPARTED THIS LIFE MAY, 1923.

  One of the Knopf girls comes out and admires my work. She is a twin and can hardly be told from her sister. Their mother can do it by smell; Knopf doesn't care, and the rest of us can never be sure. I begin to speculate about what it would be like to be married to a twin if the other were living in the same house.

  Gerda interrupts me. She is standing laughing at the entrance to the court. I put my drawing aside. The twin disappears. Wilke stops washing. Behind Gerda's back he points to the sprat box which the cat is pushing across the courtyard, then to himself and lifts two fingers. Silently he whispers: "Two."

  Today Gerda is wearing a gray sweater, a gray skirt, and a black beret. She no longer, looks like a parrot; she looks pretty and athletic and cheerful. I look at her with new eyes. A woman who is desired by someone else, even a love-starved coffinmaker, immediately becomes more precious than before. Man, as it happens, lives by relative rather than absolute values.

  "Were you at the Red Mill today?" I ask.

  Gerda nods. "That stinking hole! I was rehearsing there. How I hate these dives full of stale cigar smoke!"

  I look at her approvingly. Behind her, Wilke is buttoning his shirt, combing the shavings out of his mustache, and adding three fingers to his bid. Five boxes of sprats! A handsome offer, but I pay no attention to it. Before me stands a week's happiness, clear and definite, a happiness without pain —the simple happiness of the senses and of the disciplined imagination, the short happiness of a two weeks' night-club engagement, already half over, a happiness that has freed me from Erna and has even made Isabelle what she should be, a painless fata morgana awakening to unrealizable desires.

  "Come, Gerda," I say, suddenly filled with an upwelling of natural gratitude. "Let's go and have a first-rate meal today! Are you hungry?"

  "Yes, very. We can get—"

  "No potato salad today and no sausages! We're going to have a splendid meal and celebrate our jubilee, the mid-point of our life together. A week ago you came here for the first time; in another week you will wave me farewell from the station. Let's cele
brate the former and not think about the latter!"

  Gerda laughs. "As a matter of fact, I wasn't able to make any potato salad. Too much to do. The circus is not the same as that silly cabaret."

  "Fine, then today we'll go to the Walhalla. Do you like to eat goulash?"

  "I like to eat," Gerda replies.

  "That's the thing! Let's stick to it! And now forward to the celebration of the high mid-point of our short life!"

  I toss the drawing pad through the open window onto the office desk. As we leave I see Wilke's infinitely disappointed face. With a hopeless look he is holding up both hands—ten boxes of sprats—a fortune!

  "Why not?" Eduard Knobloch says obligingly, to my amazement. I had expected bitter opposition. The coupons are only good at noon, but, after a glance at Gerda, Eduard is ready to accept them and he even lingers beside our table: "Won't you please introduce me?"

  I am forced to do it. He has accepted the coupons, and so I must accept him. "Eduard Knobloch, hotelkeeper, res-tauranteur, poet, billionaire, and miser," I explain casually. "Fräulein Gerda Schneider."

  Eduard bows, half flattered, half annoyed. "Don't believe a word he says, gnädiges Fräulein."

  "Not even your name?" I ask.

  Gerda smiles. "Are you a billionaire? How interesting!"

  Eduard sighs. "Only a businessman with all a businessman's worries. Don't pay any attention to this silly character! And you! A beautiful, resplendent image of God, carefree as a trout swimming above the dark abysses of melancholy—"

  I can't believe my ears and gape at Eduard as though he had spit up gold. Today Gerda seems to have a magical attraction. "Never mind the plaster-card phrases, Eduard," I say. "The lady is an artist herself. Am I supposed to be the dark abyss of melancholy? Where is the goulash?"

  "I think Herr Knobloch speaks very poetically!" Gerda is looking at Eduard with innocent admiration. "How can you find time for it? With such a big establishhment and so many waiters! You must be a happy man! So rich and talented too—"

  "I manage, I manage!" Eduard is beaming. "So you are an artist too—"

  I see a sudden doubt lay hold of him. Unquestionably the shadow of Renée de la Tour has slipped in like a cloud across the moon. "A serious artist, I assume," he says.

  "More serious than you," I reply. "Fräulein Schneider is no singer as you suspect. She can make lions jump through hoops and ride on tigers. And now forget the policeman that's in you as in all true sons of our beloved fatherland and serve us our dinner!"

  "Well, lions and tigers!" Eduard's eyes have grown big. "Is that true?" he asks Gerda. "You can't believe a word this fellow says."

  I kick her foot under the table. "I was in the circus," Gerda replies, not understanding the reason for this byplay. "And I'm going back to the circus again."

  "What is there for dinner, Eduard?" I ask impatiently. "Or do we have to give you our whole life story in installments first?"

  "I'll go and see myself," Eduard says gallantly to Gerda. "For such a guest! The magic of the sawdust ring! Ah! Forgive Herr Bodmer's erratic behavior. He grew up during the war with bogtrotters and got his education from his sergeant, a hysterical postman."

  He waddles away. "A fine figure of a man," Gerda says. "Is he married?"

  "He was, but his wife ran away from him because he is so stingy."

  Gerda runs her fingers over the damask tablecloth. "She must have been a silly woman," she says dreamily. "I like thrifty people. They save their money."

  "That's the silliest thing you can do in the inflation."

  "Of course you have to invest it wisely." Gerda looks at her knife and fork of heavy silver plate. "I imagine your friend here does that all right—even if he is a poet."

  I look at her in some amazement. "That may be," I say. "But others get no advantage from it. Least of all his wife. He made her work like a slave from morning till night. Having a wife means to Eduard having someone to work for him for nothing."

  Gerda smiles ambiguously like the Mona Lisa. "Every safe has its combination, don't you know that, baby?"

  I stare at her. What's going on here? I wonder. Is this the same girl who was dining with me last night on sandwiches and milk for a modest five thousand marks, admiring the view and talking about the magic of the simple life? "Eduard is fat, dirty, and incurably stingy," I announce firmly. "I've known him for years."

  Riesenfeld, that expert on women, has told me once that this combination would scare off any woman. But Gerda seems not to be an ordinary woman. She examines the big chandeliers hanging from the ceiling like transparent stalactites, and sticks to her dream. "Probably he needs someone to take care of him. Not like a hen of course! He seems to need someone who appreciates his good qualities."

  I am now openly alarmed. Are my peaceful two weeks of happiness already slipping away? Why did I, fool that I am, have to drag Gerda here, to this place of silver and crystal? "Eduard has no good qualities," I say.

  Gerda smiles again. "Every man has some. You just have to bring them out."

  Fortunately at this moment the waiter Freidank appears, pompously bearing a pâté on a silver platter. "What in the world is that?" I ask.

  "Goose liver pâté" Freidank announces haughtily.

  "But it says potato soup on the menu!"

  "This is the menu Herr Knobloch himself ordered," says Freidank, a former lance corporal in the Commissary Department, slicing two pieces—a thick one for Gerda, a thin one for me. "Or would you rather have potato soup according to your constitutional rights?" he inquires cordially. "It can be done."

  Gerda laughs. Angered at Eduard's cheap attempt to win her with food, I am about to order potato soup when Gerda kicks me under the table. On top she graciously exchanges plates with me. "That's how it should be," she says to Freidank. "A man must always have the larger portion, don't you think?"

  "Well, yes," Freidank stutters, suddenly confused. "At home—but here—" The former lance corporal doesn't know what to do. He has had orders from Eduard to give Gerda a generous slice but me a mere sliver and he has followed those orders. Now he sees the reverse happening and almost has a nervous breakdown; he must assume responsibility and doesn't know what to do. Prompt obedience to orders has been bred into our proud blood for centuries—but to decide something by one's self is another matter. Freidank does the one thing he knows: he looks about for his master, hoping for new orders.

  Eduard appears. "Go ahead and serve, Freidank, what are you waiting for?"

  I pick up my fork and quickly cut a piece of the pate in front of me, just as Freidank, true to his original orders, tries to change the plates. Freidank freezes. Gerda bursts into laughter. Eduard takes command like a general in the field, appraises the situation, pushes Freidank aside, cuts a second good-sized piece of pate, lays it with a gallant gesture in front of Gerda, and asks me in a bittersweet tone: '"Do you like it?"

  "It's all right," I reply. "Too bad it's not goose liver."

  "It is goose liver."

  "It tastes like calf's liver."

  "Have you ever in your life eaten goose liver?"

  "Eduard," I reply, "I have eaten so much goose liver that I vomited it."

  Eduard laughs through his nose. "Where?" he asks contemptuously.

  "In France, during the advance, while I was being trained to be a man. We conquered a whole store full of goose liver. Strasbourg goose liver in tureens with black truffles from Peügord which are missing in yours. At that time you were peeling potatoes in the kitchen."

  I do not go on to say that I got sick because we also found the owner of the store—a little old woman plastered in shreds on the remnant of the wall, her gray head torn off and stuck on a store hook as though impaled on the lance of some barbarian tribesman.

  "And how do you like it?" Eduard asks Gerda in the melting tones of a frog squatting happily beside the dark abysses of melancholy.

  "Fine," Gerda replies, going to work.

  Eduard makes a courtly bow and withdraws
like a dancing elephant. "You see," Gerda says beaming at me. "He isn't so stingy after all."