I put down my fork. "Listen, you circus wonder with your sawdust halo," I reply, "you see before you a man whose pride is still severely injured, to speak in Eduard's jargon, because he was left flat by a lady who ran off with a rich profiteer. Is it now your intention to pour boiling oil in the still unhealed wounds, to borrow Eduard's baroque prose again, by doing the same thing to me?"
Gerda laughs and goes on eating. "Don't talk nonsense, my pet," she commands with her mouth full. "And don't be an injured liverwurst. Make more money than the others if that's what's bothering you."
"Fine advice! How am I to make it? By magic?"
"The way the others do. They've managed somehow."
"Eduard inherited this hotel," I say bitterly.
"And Willy?"
"Willy is a profiteer."
"What is a profiteer?"
"A man who knows all the angles. Who deals in everything from herrings to steel shares. Who does business where he can with whom he can and how he can as long as he manages to stay out of jail."
"Well, there you seel" Gerda says, helping herself to the rest of the pâté.
"Do you want me to be one?"
Gerda cracks a roll with her strong teeth. "Be one or don't just as you like. But don't get in a stew if you don't want to be one and the others do. Anyone can complain, my petl"
"That's right," I say, perplexed and suddenly very sober. A mass of soap bubbles suddenly seem to be bursting inside my skull. I look at Gerda. She has a damnably reasonable way of looking at things. "You're perfectly right, you know," I say.
"Of course I'm right. But just look what's coming! Do you think that can be for us?"
It is for us. A roast chicken and asparagus. A meal for munitions makers. Eduard supervises the serving himself. He lets Freidank carve. "The breast for madame," he commands.
"I'd rather have a leg," Gerda says.
"A leg and a piece of the breast for madame," Eduard directs gallantly.
"Go right ahead," Gerda replies, "You are a cavalier, Herr Knobloch!" I knew you were!"
Eduard smirks with self-satisfaction. I cannot understand why he is putting on this act. I can't believe he likes Gerda so much as to make her presents of this sort; more likely he is trying to snatch her away from me out of rage over our coupons. A retaliatory act of justice. "Freidank," I say. "Take this skeleton off my plate. I don't eat bones. Give me the other leg in return. Or is your chicken a one-legged victim of the war?"
Freidank looks at his master like a sheep dog. "That's the tastiest of all," Eduard explains. "The breast bones are very delicate to nibble."
"I'm no nibbler. I'm an eater."
Eduard shrugs his heavy shoulders and reluctantly gives me the other leg. "Wouldn't you rather have some salad?" he asks. "Asparagus is very injurious to drunkards."
"Give me the asparagus. I am a modern man with a strong tendency to self-destruction."
Eduard floats off like a rubber rhinoceros. Suddenly I have an inspiration. "Knobloch!" I roar after him in the thunderous tones of Renée de la Tour.
He whirls around as though struck in the back by a lance. "What's the meaning of that?" he asks me indignantly.
"What?"
"To roar like that."
"Roar? Who's roaring except you? Or don't you want Miss Schneider to have some salad? If not, why offer it to her?"
Eduard's eyes become enormous. One can see in them a monstrous suspicion growing into a certainty. "You—" he asks Gerda. "Was it you who called me?"
"If there is any salad, I'd like to have some," Gerda answers, not knowing what it is all about. Eduard continues to stand beside our table. Now he firmly believes that Gerda is Renée de la Tour's sister. I can see how he regrets that liver pâté, the chicken, and the asparagus. He feels that he has been horribly tricked. "It was Herr Bodmer," says Freidank, who has crept up. "I saw him."
But Freidank's words make no impression on Eduard. "Speak when you're spoken to, waiter," I say to him carelessly. "You should have learned that from the Prussians! On your way now—go on spilling goulash sauce down the necks of unsuspecting guests. And you, Eduard, since you're here, tell me whether this magnificant meal is a gift or are you going to want our coupons for it?"
Eduard looks as though he were about to have a stroke. "Hand over the coupons, you scoundrel," he says dully.
I tear them out and lay the bits of paper on the table. "Who's been playing the scoundrel here is open to question, you incapable Don Juan," I say.
Eduard does not pick up the coupons himself. "Freidank," he says, now almost voiceless with rage. "Throw this rubbish into the wastebasket."
"Wait," I say, reaching for the menu. "If we are going to pay, we are still entitled to dessert. What would you like, Gerda? Rote grütze or compote?"
"What do you recommend, Herr Knobloch?" asks Gerda, unaware of the drama going on inside Eduard.
Eduard makes a despairing gesture and departs. "Well then, compote!" I shout after him.
He jerks slightly and then goes on as though he were treading on eggs. Each second he expects to hear the drill sergeant's voice again. I hesitate and then decide against it, as a more effective tactic. "What's going on here all of a sudden?" Gerda asks.
"Nothing," I reply, dividing the chicken bones between us. "Nothing but a small illustration of the great Clausewitz's thesis on strategy: Attack when your opponent thinks he has won, and then at the point where he least expects it."
Gerda nods uncomprehendingly and begins to eat the compote that Freidank has rudely slapped down in front of us. I look at her thoughtfully and decide never to bring her to the Walhalla again, but from now on to follow Georg's iron rule: Never take a woman to a new place, then she won't insist on going there and won't run away from you.
It is night. I am leaning on the window sill of my room. The moon is shining, the heavy scent of lilacs drifts up from the garden. It's an hour since I came home from the Alstädter Hof. A pair of lovers flits along the street in the shadow of the moon and disappears into our garden. I do nothing about it; when you are not thirsty yourself you are generous toward others—and now the nights are irresistible. Just to prevent accidents, I have put signs on the two precious memorial crosses with the inscription "Warning! May fall! Avoid broken toes!" For some reason or other the lovers seem to prefer the crosses when the ground is wet; no doubt because they can hold onto them more firmly, although you would think the medium-sized monuments would do equally well. I had the notion of putting up another sign recommending them, but I gave it up. Sometimes Frau Kroll rises early and, for all her tolerance, she would box my ears for frivolity before I could explain to her that before the war I was a prudish fellow—a characteristic that disappeared during the defense of our beloved fatherland.
Suddenly I see a square black figure coming along through the moonlight. I freeze. It is Watzek, the horse butcher. He disappears into his house two hours ahead of time. Perhaps he has run out of nags; horseflesh is much in demand these days. I watch the window. It lights up, and Watzek's shadow wanders about. I wonder whether to tell Georg Kroll; but disturbing lovers is a thankless task and, besides, it may be that Watzek will go to sleep without noticing anything. That, however, does not seem to be happening. The butcher opens the window and stares right and left along the street. I hear him snort. He closes the shutters and after a while appears at the door with a chair in his hand, his butcher's knife in the leg of his boot. He sits down on the chair as though to await Lisa's return. I look at the clock; it is eleven thirty. The night is warm, and Watzek may sit there for hours. Lisa, on the other hand, has been with Georg for quite a while; the hoarse panting of love has already subsided. If she runs into the butcher's arms she will no doubt find some plausible explanation and he no doubt will be taken in. Just the same, it would be better if nothing happened.
I creep down the stairs and tap out the beginning of the "Hohenfriedberger March" on Georg's door. His bald head appears. I tell him what has happened. "Damn it
," he says, "Go and try to get him away."
"At this hour?"
"Try it! Exercise your charm."
I wander out, yawn, pause, and then stroll over to Watzek. "Nice evening," I say.
"Nice evening, shit," Watzek replies.
"Well, of course," I concede.
"It won't last much longer," Watzek says suddenly and fiercely.
"What won't?"
"What? You know exactly what! This filthiness! What else?"
"Filthiness?" I ask in alarm. "What do you mean?"
"Well, what do you think? Don't you see it yourself?"
I glance at the knife in his boot and I already see Georg lying with throat cut among the monuments. Not Lisa, of course; that's man's old idiocy. "It depends on how you look at it," I say diplomatically. I can't understand why Watzek hasn't already climbed through Georg's window. It's on the ground floor and open.
"All that will be atoned for," Watzek declares grimly. "Blood will flow. The guilty will pay."
I look at him. He has long arms and a thickset frame; he looks very strong. I could catch him in the chin with my knee and when he staggered to his feet kick him between the legs—or if he tried to run I could trip him up and then pound his head on the pavement. That would do for the moment—but what about later on?
"Did you hear him?" Watzek asks.
"Who?"
"You know! Him! Who else? There's only one after all!"
I listen. I haven't heard a thing. The street is quiet. Georg's window has now been cautiously closed.
"Who did you expect me to hear?" I ask loudly to win time and warn the others so that Lisa can disappear into the garden.
"Man alive, him! The Führer! Adolf Hitler!"
"Adolf Hitler!" I repeat in relief. "Him!"
"What do you mean, him?" Watzek asks challengingly. "Aren't you for him?"
"And how! Especially just now! You can't imagine how much!"
"Then why didn't you listen to him?"
"But he wasn't here."
"He was on the radio. We heard him at the stockyard. A six-tube set. He will change everything! Marvelous speech! That man knows what's wrong. Everything must be changed."
"That's obvious," I say. There, in one sentence, lies the whole stock in trade of the world's demagogues. "Everything must be changed! How about a beer?"
"Beer? Where?"
"At Blume's, around the corner."
"I'm waiting for my wife."
"You can wait for her just as well at Blume's. What did Hitler talk about? I'd like to know. My radio is caput."
"About everything," the butcher says, getting up. "That man knows everything! Everything, I tell you, comrade!"
He puts his chair back in the hall and we wander com-panionably off toward the Dortmunder beer in Blume's Garden Restaurant.
10.
In the mild twilight the glass man is standing motionless in front of a rose bed. Gregory VII is strolling along the avenue of chestnut trees. A middle-aged nurse is taking a bent old man for a walk; he keeps trying to pinch her muscular posterior and after each attempt giggles happily. Two men are sitting beside me on a bench, each explaining to the other why he is mad and neither paying the slightest attention. Three women
in striped dresses are watering the flowers, moving silently through the evening with their tin cans.
I am perched on a bench beside the rose bed. Here everything is peaceful and right. No one is disturbed because the dollar has risen twenty thousand marks in a single day. No one hangs himself on that account, as an elderly couple did last night in the city. They were found this morning in the wardrobe—each on a length of clothesline. Except for them there was nothing in the wardrobe; everything had been sold or pawned, even the bed and the wardrobe itself. When the purchaser of the furniture came to get it he discovered the bodies. They were clinging together and their swollen, bluish tongues were pointed at each other. They were very light and could be taken down quickly. Both were freshly washed, their hair brushed, and their clothes clean and neatly mended. The purchaser, a full-blooded furniture dealer, vomited when he saw them and announced that he did not want the wardrobe. It was not until evening that he changed his mind and sent for it. By then the bodies were lying on the bed and had to be removed because the bed, too, was to be taken. Neighbors loaned a couple of tables which served as biers for the old people, their heads covered with tissue paper. The tissue paper was the only thing in the apartment that still belonged to them. They left a letter in which they said they had originally intended to kill themselves by gas, but the gas company had turned it off because the bill was so long overdue. And so they asked the furniture dealer's pardon for the trouble they were causing him.
Isabelle approaches. She is wearing blue shorts that leave her knees bare, a yellow blouse, and an amber necklace.
I have not seen her for some time. After devotion in church I have slipped away each time and gone home. It was not easy to forgo the fine meal and the wine with Bodendiek and Wernicke, but I preferred peace and quiet with sandwiches and potato salad and Gerda.
"Where have you been?" Isabelle asks me as she always does.
"Out there," I say vaguely. "Where money is the one thing of importance."
She sits down on the arm of the bench. Her legs are very brown, as though she had spent a lot of time in the sun. The two men beside me look up ill-temperedly, then rise and walk away. Isabelle slides down onto the bench. "Why do children die, Rudolf?" she asks.
"I don't know."
I do not look at her. I am determined never again to become involved with her; it is bad enough that she is sitting there beside me with her long legs and her tennis shorts as though she had guessed that from now on I intend to live by Georg's recipe.
"Why are they born if they are going to die right away?"
"You must ask Vicar Bodendiek about that. He maintains that God keeps a record of every hair that falls from everyone's head and that all of it has a meaning and a moral lesson."
Isabelle laughs. "God keeps a record? Of whom? Of Himself? Why? After all, He knows everything, doesn't He?"
"Yes," I said, suddenly angry without knowing why. "He is omniscient, just, kind, and filled with love—nevertheless, children die and the mothers they need die and no one knows why there is so much misery in the world."
Isabelle turns toward me with a start. She is no longer laughing. "Why isn't everyone simply happy, Rudolf?"
"I don't know. Perhaps because then God would be bored."
"No," she says quickly. "That's not the reason."
"What is it then?"
"Because He is afraid."
"Afraid? Of what?"
"If everyone were happy, there would be no more need of God."
Now I am looking at her. Her eyes are very transparent. Her face is brown and thinner than before. "He only exists for unhappiness," she says. "That is when you need Him and pray to Him. That's why He causes it."
"There are people, too, who pray to God because they are happy."
"Really?" Isabelle smiles incredulously. "Then they pray because they are afraid they won't stay happy. Everything is fear, Rudolf. Don't you know that?"
The cheerful old man is led past us by his muscular nurse. From a window in the main building comes the high whine of a vacuum cleaner. I look around. The window is open but barred, a black hole out of which the vacuum cleaner screams like a damned soul.
"Everything is fear," Isabelle repeats. "Aren't you ever afraid?"
"I don't know," I reply, still on my guard. "I guess so. I was often afraid in the war."
"That's not what I mean, that is reasonable fear. I mean nameless fear."
"Of what? Of life?"
She shakes her head. "No. An earlier fear."
"Of death?"
She shakes her head again. I ask no further questions. I don't want to become involved. We sit in silence for a time in the twilight. Once more I have the feeling that Isabelle is not sick, but I suppress t
he thought. If it arises, confusion will follow, and I don't want that. Finally Isabelle moves. "Why don't you say something?" she asks.