The Black Obelisk

by Erich Maria Remarque

  We have only known about all this since 1922. Before then we tried to transact business in the same way as Hein-rich Kroll and almost went broke doing it. We had sold out almost our entire inventory and, to our amazement, had nothing to show for it except a worthless bank account and a few suitcases full of currency not even good enough to paper our walls with. We tried at first to sell and then buy again as quickly as possible—but the inflation easily overtook us. The lag before we got paid was too long; while we waited, the value of money fell so fast that even our most profitable sale turned into a loss. Only after we began to pay with promissory notes could we maintain our position. Even so, we are making no real profit now, but at least we can live. Since every enterprise in Germany is financed in this fashion, the Reichsbank naturally has to keep on printing unsecured currency and so the mark falls faster and faster. The government apparently doesn't care; all it loses in this way is the national debt. Those who are ruined are the people who cannot pay with notes, the people who have property they are forced to sell, small shopkeepers, day laborers, people with small incomes who see their private savings and their bank accounts melting away, and government officials and employees who have to survive on salaries that no longer allow them to buy so much as a new pair of shoes. The ones who profit are the exchange kings, the profiteers, the foreigners who buy what they like with a few dollars, kronen, or zlotys, and the big entrepreneurs, the manufacturers, and the speculators on the exchange whose property and stocks increase without limit. For them practically everything is free. It is the great sellout of thrift, honest effort, and respectability. The vultures flock from all sides, and the only ones who come out on top are those who accumulate debts. The debts disappear of themselves.

  It was Riesenfeld who at the last instant instructed us in these matters and turned us into small-time participants in the great sellout. He accepted our first ninety-day note, although at the time we were by no means good for the sum on the face of it. But the Odenwald Granite Works was, and that was enough.

  Naturally we were grateful. We tried to entertain him like an Indian rajah when he came to Werdenbrück—that is, insofar as an Indian rajah could be entertained in Werdenbrück. Kurt Bach, our sculptor, made a colorful portrait of Riesenfeld which we solemnly presented to him. Unfortunately, he did not like it. It makes him look like a country preacher, which is exactly what he does not want. He wants to look like a dark seducer and he assumes that that is the effect he makes—a remarkable example of self-deception, considering his pointed belly, and short, bandy legs. But who does not live by self-deception? I, with my innocuous, average talents, do I not cherish, especially at night, the dream of becoming a better man with ability enough to find a publisher. In these circumstances who is to throw the first stone at Riesenfeld's parenthetical legs, especially when they, at a time like this, are clad in genuine English tweeds?

  "What in the world are we going to do with him, Georg?" I ask. "This time we haven't a single attraction! Riesenfeld won't be satisfied with just getting drunk. He has too much imagination and too restless a character for that. He wants something he can see and hear, or, better yet, grab hold of. Our choice of women is hopeless. The few pretty ones we know haven't the slightest desire to spend a whole evening listening to Riesenfeld in his role of Don Juan of 1923. Unfortunately, helpfulness and understanding are only to be found among the older and homely dames."

  Georg grins. "I don't even know whether our cash will last out the night. When I got the stuff I made a mistake about the dollar rate; I thought it was still the same as at ten o'clock. When the twelve o'clock quotation was announced, it was too late."

  "On the other hand there's been no change today."

  "There has at the Red Mill, my boy. On Sundays they're two days ahead of the dollar rate there. God knows what a bottle of wine will cost tonight!"

  "God doesn't know either," I say. "The proprietor himself doesn't know. He only decides on the price when the electric light goes on. Why doesn't Riesenfeld have a passion for the arts? That would be a lot cheaper. Admission to the museum still costs only two hundred and fifty marks. For that we could show him pictures and plaster heads for hours. Or music. There's an organ concert at St. Catherine's today—"

  Georg chokes with laughter. "Well, all right," I admit, "it's absurd to picture Riesenfeld in such a setting; but why doesn't he at least love operettas and light music? We could take him to the theater, and it would still be much less than that damn night club!"

  "Here he comes," Georg says. "Ask him."

  We open the door. Through the early spring evening Riesenfeld comes sailing up the steps. We see at once that the enchantment of spring twilight has had no effect on him. We greet him with false camaraderie. Riesenfeld notices it, squints at us, and drops into a chair. "Quit the play acting," he growls in my direction.

  "That's just what I was going to do," I reply. "It's not easy for me. What you call play acting is known elsewhere as good manners."

  Riesenfeld grins briefly and evilly. "Good manners won't get you far these days—"

  "They won't? Then what will?" I ask to draw him out.

  "Cast-iron elbows and a rubber conscience."

  "But, Herr Riesenfeld," Georg says reassuringly, "you yourself have the best manners in the world! Perhaps not the best in the bourgeois sense—but certainly the most elegant—"

  "Really? There's just a chance you might be mistaken!" Despite his disclaimer Riesenfeld is flattered.

  "He has the manners of a robber," I remark, exactly as Georg expects. We play this game without rehearsal, as though we knew it by heart, "Or rather those of a pirate. Unfortunately, they bring him success."

  Riesenfeld has recoiled a little at the word robber; the shot went too near home. But "pirate" reassures him. Exactly as intended. Georg gets a bottle of Roth schnaps out of the cupboard where the porcelain angels stand and pours. "What shall we drink to?" he asks.

  Ordinarily people drink to health and success in business. With us it's a bit difficult. Riesenfeld's too sensitive a nature for that; he maintains that in the tombstone business such a toast is not only a paradox but the equivalent of wishing that as many people as possible may die. One might as well drink to cholera, war, and influenza. Since then we have left the toasts to him.

  He stares at us sidewise, his glass in his hand, but does not speak. After a while he says suddenly in the half-darkness: "What actually is time?"

  Georg puts his glass down in astonishment. "The pepper of life," I reply. The old rascal can't catch me so easily with his tricks. Not for nothing am I a member of the Werdenbrück Poets' Club; we are used to big questions.

  Riesenfeld disregards me. "What's your opinion, Herr Kroll?" he asks.

  "I'm a simple man," Georg says. "Prost!"

  'Time," Riesenfeld continues doggedly. "Time, this uninterrupted flow—not our lousy time! Time, this gradual death."

  Now I, too, put down my glass. I think we'd better have some light," I say. "What did you eat for dinner, Herr Riesenfeld?"

  "Shut up, youngster, when grownups are talking," Riesenfeld replies, and I notice that I have been inattentive for a moment. He did not intend to disconcert us—he means what he says. God knows what has happened to him this afternoon! I am tempted to reply that time is an important factor in the note we want him to accept—but content myself with my drink instead.

  "I'm fifty-six now," Riesenfeld says, "but I remember the time when I was twenty as though it were only a couple of years ago. What's become of everything in between? What's happened? Suddenly you wake up and find you're old. What about you, Herr Kroll?"

  "Much the same," Georg replies. "I'm forty but I often feel sixty. In my case it was the war."

  He is lying to support Riesenfeld. "It's different with me," I explain. "Also because of the war. I went in when I was a little over seventeen. Now I am twenty-five; but I still feel like seventeen. Like seventeen and seventy. The War Department stole my youth."

  "With
you it was not the war," Riesenfeld replies. "You're simply a case of arrested intellectual development. That would have happened to you if there'd never been a war. As a matter of fact, the war really made you precocious; without it you would still be at the twelve-year-old level."

  "Thanks," I say. "What a compliment! At twelve everyone is a genius. He only loses his originality with the onset of sexual maturity, to which you, you granite Casanova, attribute such exaggerated importance. That's a pretty monstrous compensation for loss of spiritual feedom."

  Georg fills our glasses again. We see that it is going to be a tough evening. We must get Riesenfeld out of the depths of cosmic melancholy, and neither one of us is especially keen on being involved in philosophical platitudes tonight. We should prefer to sit quietly under a chestnut tree and drink a bottle of Moselle instead of in the Red Mill commiserating with Riesenfeld over his lost youth.

  "If you're interested in the relativity of time," I say, briefly hopeful, "then I can introduce you to a society where you can meet experts in that field—the Poets' Club of this dear city. Hans Hungermann, the writer, has elucidated the problem in an unpublished sequence of sixty poems. We can go there right now; there's a meeting every Sunday night with a social hour afterward."

  "Are there women there?"

  "Naturally not. Women poets are like calculating horses. With the exception, of course, of Sappho's pupils."

  "Well then, what's the social hour?" Riesenfeld asks.

  "It consists of running down other writers. Especially the successful ones."

  Riesenfeld grunts contemptuously. I am ready to give up. Suddenly the window in the horse butcher's house across the street lights up like a brightly lit painting in a dark museum. Behind the curtains we see Lisa. She is just getting dressed and has nothing on except a brassiere and a pair of very short white silk panties.

  Riesenfeld emits a snort like a ground hog. His cosmic melancholy has disappeared like' magic. I get up to turn on the light. "No light!" he snaps. "Have you no feeling for poetry?"

  He creeps to the window. Lisa begins to draw a tight dress over her head. She writhes like a serpent. Riesenfeld snorts aloud. "A seductive creature! Donnerwetter, what a rear end! A dream! Who is she?"

  "Susanna in the bath," I explain, trying to intimate delicately that at the moment we are in the role of the old goats watching her.

  "Nonsense!" The voyeur with the Einstein complex never moves his eyes from the golden window. "I mean what's her name."

  "I haven't the slightest idea. This is the first time we've seen her. She wasn't even living there at noon today," I say to whet his interest.

  "Really?" Lisa has got her dress on and is now smoothing it down with her hands. Behind Riesenfeld's back Georg fills his glass and mine. We toss off the drinks. "A woman of breeding," Riesenfeld says, continuing to cling to the window. "A lady, that's easy to see. Probably French."

  As far as we know, Lisa comes from Bohemia. "It might be Mademoiselle de la Tour," I reply. "I heard someone mention that name yesterday."

  "You see?" Riesenfeld turns around to us for an instant. "I told you she was French! One can tell right away—that je ne sais quoi! Don't you think so too, Herr Kroll?"

  "You're the connoisseur, Herr Riesenfeld."

  The light in Lisa's room goes off. Riesenfeld pours his drink down his time-parched throat and once more presses his face against the window. After a while Lisa appears at the door and goes down the steps into the street. Riesenfeld stares after her. "An enchanting walk! She does not mince; she takes long strides. A lithe, luscious panther! Women who mince are always a disappointment. But I give you my guarantee for that one."

  At the words "lithe, luscious panther" I have quickly downed another drink. Georg has sunk into his chair, grinning silently. We have turned the trick. Now Riesenfeld whirls around. His face shimmers like a pale moon. "Light, gentlemen! What are we waiting for? Forward into life!"

  We follow him into the mild night. I stare at his froglike back. If only, I think enviously, it were as easy for me to bob up from my gray hours as it is for this quick-change artist.

  The Red Mill is jam packed. All we can get is a table next to the orchestra. The music is too loud anyway, but at our table it is completely deafening. At first we shout our observations into one another's ears; after that we content ourselves with signs like a trio of deaf mutes. The dance floor is so crowded that the dancers can hardly move. But that doesn't matter to Riesenfeld. He spies a woman in white silk at the bar and rushes up to her. Proudly he propels her with his pointed belly across the dance floor. She is a head taller than he and stares in boredom at the balloon-hung ceiling. Lower down, Riesenfeld seethes and smolders like Vesuvius. His demon has seized him. "How would it be if we poured some brandy into his wine to make him tight quicker?" I ask Georg. "The boy is drinking like a spotted wild ass! This is our fifth bottle! In two hours we'll be bankrupt if it goes on like this. I estimate we've already drunk up a couple of imitation marble tombstones. Here's hoping he doesn't bring that white ghost to our table so that we'll have to quench her thirst too." Georg shakes his head. "That's a bar girl. She'll have to go back."

  Riesenfeld returns. He is red in the face and sweating. "What does all this amount to compared to the magic of fantasy!" he roars at us through the confusion. "Tangible reality, well and good! But where's the poetry? That window tonight against the dark sky—that was something to dream about! A woman like that, even if you never see her again, is something you'll never forget. Understand what I mean?"

  "Sure," Georg shouts. "What you can't get always seems better than what you have. That's the origin of all human romanticism and idiocy. Prost, Riesenfeld!"

  "I don't mean it so coarsely," Riesenfeld roars against the fox trot "Oh, if St. Peter Knew That." "I mean it more delicately."

  "So do I," Georg roars back. "I mean it even more delicately!" "All right! As delicately as you like!" The music rises to a mighty crescendo. The dance floor is a variegated sardine box. Suddenly I stiffen. Laced into the trappings of a monkey in fancy dress, my sweetheart Erna is pushing her way through the swaying mob to my right. She does not see me, but I recognize her red hair from afar. She is hanging shamelessly on the shoulder of a typical young profiteer. I sit there motionless, but I feel as though I had swallowed a hand grenade. There she is dancing, the little beast to whom ten of the poems in my unpublished collection "Dust and Starlight" are dedicated, the girl who has been pretending for a week that she is not allowed out of the house because of a mild case of concussion. She says she fell in the dark. Fell indeed, but into the arms of this young man in the double-breasted tuxedo, with a seal ring on the paw with which he is supporting the small of Erna's back. A fine case of concussion! And I, imbecile that I am, sent her just this afternoon a bunch of rose-colored tulips from our garden with a poem in three stanzas entitled "Pan's May Devotions." Suppose she read it aloud to this profiteer! I can see the two doubled up with laughter.

  "What's the matter with you?" Riesenfeld roars. "Are you sick?"

  "Hot!" I roar back and feel sweat running down my back. I am furious; if Erna turns around she will see me perspiring and red in the face—when more than anything I should like to appear superior and cool and at my ease like a man of the world. Quickly I wipe my face with my handkerchief. Riesenfeld grims unsympathetically. Georg notices this. "You're sweating quite a bit yourself, Riesenfeld," he says.

  "That's different! This sweat comes from the joy of life!" Riesenfeld roars.

  "It's the sweat of fleeting time," I snarl maliciously and feel the salt water trickling into the corners of my mouth.

  Erna is near us now. She is staring out over the orchestra in vacant happiness. I give my face a mildly reproachful, superior, and smiling expression while the sweat wilts my collar. "What's the matter with you anyway?" Riesenfeld shouts. "You look like a moon-struck kangaroo!"

  I ignore him. Erna has finally turned around. I look toward the dancers, examining them cool
ly until at last, with an expression of surprise, I pretend accidentally to recognize her. Casually I lift two fingers in greeting. "He is meschugge," Riesenfeld howls through the syncopation of the fox trot "Himmelsvater."