The Black Obelisk

by Erich Maria Remarque

  My work for the day is finished. Georg Kroll has retired into his den beside the office with the new issues of the Berliner Tageblatt and the Elegant World. I could do some more work with colored chalk on the drawing of a war memorial that I have made, but tomorrow is time enough for that. I shut the typewriter and open the window. A phonograph is playing in Lisa's apartment. She appears fully dressed this time, waves a tremendous bouquet of red roses out the window, and throws me a kiss. Georg, I think. What a sly one! I point toward his room. Lisa leans out of the window and shouts across the street in her hoarse voice: "Many thanks for the flowers! You may be vultures but you're cavaliers too!"

  She shows her predatory teeth and trembles with laughter at her joke. Then she gets out a letter. " 'My lady,' she caws. " 'An admirer of your beauty takes the liberty of laying these roses at your feet.' " She catches her breath with a hoot. "And the address! 'To the Circe of Hackenstrasse 5.' What is a Circe?"

  "A woman who turns men into swine."

  Lisa rocks with laughter. The little house seems to rock with her. That's not Georg, I think. He hasn't completely lost his mind. "Who's the letter from?" I ask.

  "Alex Riesenfeld," Lisa croaks. "By courtesy of Kroll and Sons. Riesenfeld!" She is almost choking. "Is that the little runt you were with in the Red Mill?"

  "He is not little and not a runt," I reply. "He's a giant sitting down and very virile. Besides, he's a billionaire!"

  A thoughtful expression crosses Lisa's face. Then she waves and smiles again and disappears. I close the window. Suddenly for no reason I remember Erna. I begin to whistle uncomfort ably and wander across the garden to the shed where Kurt

  Bach's studio is.

  He is sitting on the front steps with his guitar. Behind him shimmers a sandstone lion which he has just completed for a war memorial. It is the same old cat, dying of toothache.

  "Kurt," I say, "if you could have a wish instantly fulfilled what would you wish?"

  "A thousand dollars," he replies without reflection, and strikes a resounding chord on his guitar.

  "Pfui Teufel! I thought you were an idealist."

  "I am an idealist. That's why I wish I had a thousand dollars. I don't need to wish idealism for myself. I have that in abundance already. What I need is money."

  There is no possible reply to that. It's perfect logic. "What Would you do with the money?" I ask, still hopeful.

  "I would buy a block of houses and live on the rent."

  "You couldn't live on the rent," I say. "It's too low and you're not allowed to raise it. You couldn't even pay for repairs and you would soon have to sell your houses again."

  "Not the houses I'd buy. I'd keep them until the inflation is over. Then they would earn proper rents again and all I'd have to do is rake them in." He strikes another chord. "Houses," he says thoughtfully as though he were speaking of Michelangelo. "For as little as a hundred dollars you can buy a house that used to be worth forty thousand gold marks. What a profit you could make on that! Why haven't I a childless uncle in America?"

  "Kurt," I say in disappointment, "you're a disgusting materialist. A house owner, that's all you want to be! And what's to become of your immortal soul?"

  "A house owner and a sculptor." Bach executes a glissan-do. Upstairs, Wilke, the carpenter, is keeping time with his hammer. He is working hard on a white coffin for a child and is getting paid overtime. "Then I'd never need to make another damn dying lion or ascending eagle for you! No more animals! Never any more animals. Animals are something to eat or shoot or tame or admire. Nothing else! I have had enough of animals. Especially heroic ones."

  He begins to play the "Hunter from the Kurpfalz." I see that I will get no decent conversation out of him tonight. Especially not the sort to make a man forget unfaithful women. "What is the meaning of life?" I ask as I leave.

  "Eating, sleeping, and intercourse."

  I dismiss the idea with a gesture and wander back. Unconsciously I walk in time with Wilke's hammering; then I notice it and change the rhythm.

  Lisa is standing in the gateway. She has the roses in her hand and holds them out to me. "Here! Take them! I have no use for them."

  "Why not? Haven't you any feeling for the beauty of nature?"

  "No, thank God. I'm no cow. Riesenfeld!" She laughs in her night-club voice. "Tell the boy I'm not the sort of person you give flowers to."

  "What then?"

  "Jewelry," Lisa replies. "What did you think?"

  "Not clothes?"

  "Only when you're on more intimate terms." She squints at me. "You look miserable. Want me to cheer you up?"

  "No thanks," I reply. "I'm cheerful enough. Go along by yourself to the cocktail hour at the Red Mill."

  "I didn't mean the Red Mill. Do you still play the organ for those crazy people?"

  "Yes," I say in surprise. "How did you know about that?"

  "Word gets around. Do you know, I'd like to go with you to that loony bin sometime."

  "You'll get there soon enough without me."

  "Well, we'll just see which of us is the first," Lisa says carelessly, laying the flowers on the curb. "Here, take these vegetables! I can't keep them in the house. My old man is jealous."

  "What?"

  "Jealous as a razor! And why not?"

  I do not know what is jealous about a razor; but the image is convincing. "If your husband is jealous, how can you keep on disappearing at night?" I ask.

  "He does his butchering at night. I make my own arrangements."

  "And when he isn't butchering?"

  "Then I have a job as hat-check girl in the Red Mill."

  "Have you really?"

  "God, you are stupid!" Lisa replies.

  "And the clothes and jewelry?"

  "All cheap imitations." Lisa grins. "Every husband believes that! You can persuade men of anything! Well then, take your green groceries. Send them to some calf. You look as though you sent flowers."

  "Never."

  Lisa throws me an abysmal glance over her shoulder. Then without replying she walks back across the street on her beautiful legs. She is wearing shabby red slippers; one has a pompom, on the other it is missing.

  The roses gleam in the twilight It is an impressive bouquet. Nothing shabby about Riesenfeld. Fifty thousand marks, I estimate. Glancing around cautiously, I pick them up like a thief and go to my room.

  Upstairs the window is red with sunset. The room is full of shadows and reflections; suddenly loneliness falls upon me as though from ambush. I know it's nonsense; I am no more lonely than an ox in a herd of oxen, but I cannot help myself. Loneliness has nothing to do with a lack of company. It occurs to me that perhaps I was too hasty with Erna last night. Quite possibly there could be an innocent explanation for everything that has happened. She was jealous; that was clear in everything she said. And jealousy is love. Everyone knows that.

  I stare through the window, realizing that jealousy is not love but possessiveness—but what does it matter? The twilight distorts your thoughts, and you ought not to argue with women, Georg says. But that's exactly what I have been doing! Full of remorse I smell the fragrance of the roses, which have transformed my room into a Venusberg. I realize that I am melting into universal forgiveness, universal conciliation and hope. Quickly I write a few lines, seal the envelope without even rereading them, and go into the office to get the issue paper in which the last shipment of porcelain angels was sent. I wrap up the roses and go to look for Fritz Kroll, the youngest sprig of the firm. Fritz is twelve years old. "Fritz," I say, "do you want to earn two thousand?"

  "You bet," Fritz replies. "Same address?"

  "Yes."

  He disappears with the roses—the third clearheaded person this evening. They all know what they want, Kurt, Lisa, Fritz —I alone have no idea. It's not Erna either; I realize that the minute it's too late to call Fritz back. But what is it? Where are the altars, where the gods and where the sacrifices? I decide to go to the Mozart concert—even though I shall be a
lone and the music will make it still worse.

  The sky is full of stars when I come back. My steps reverberate in the street and I am full of excitement. Quickly I open the office door, turn on the light, and stop short. There are the roses beside the Presto mimeographing machine and there, too, is my letter, unopened, and beside it a scarp of paper with a message from Fritz. "The lady says to go bury yourself. Sincerely Fritz."

  Bury myself! A thoughtful joke! There I stand, disgraced to the marrow, full of shame and rage. I put Fritz's note into the cold grate. Then I sit down in my chair and brood. My rage outweighs my shame, as always happens when one is really ashamed and knows he ought to be. I write another letter, pick up the roses, and go to the Red Mill. "Please give these to Fräulein Gerda Schneider," I say to the doorman. "The acrobat."

  The man in the braided uniform looks at me as though I had made him an immoral proposal. Then he gestures haughtily over his shoulder with his thumb. "Give them to a page."

  I find a page and tell him to present the bouquet during the performance.

  He promises to do so. I hope Erna will be there to see it. Then I wander for a while through the city until I grow tired and go home.

  I am greeted by a melodious tinkle. Knopf is once more standing in front of the obelisk relieving himself. I say nothing; I want no more arguments. I take a pail, fill it with water, and empty it at Knopf's feet. The Sergeant Major gapes, "Inundation," he mutters. "Had no idea it had rained." And he staggers into the house.

  6.

  Over the woods hangs a dusky, red moon. The evening is sultry and very still. The glass man walks past silently. Now he can venture out; there is no danger that the sun will turn his head into a burning glass. However, he is wearing heavy rubbers as a precaution—there might be a thunderstorm and that is even more dangerous for him than the sun. Isabelle is sitting beside me on one of the garden benches in front of the pavilion for incurables. She is wearing a tight black dress and there are high-heeled golden shoes on her bare feet.

  "Rudolf," she says, "you abandoned me again. Last time you promised to stay. Where have you been?"

  Rudolf, I think, thank God! I couldn't have stood being Rolf tonight. I have had a depressing day and feel as though I had been shot at with rock salt.

  "I have not abandoned you," I say. "I was away—but I have not abandoned you."

  "Where were you?"

  "Somewhere out there—"

  Out there with the madmen is what I almost said, but I caught myself in time.

  "Why?"

  "I don't know, Isabelle. People do so many things without knowing why—"

  "I was looking for you last night. There was a moon—not that one up there, the red, restless, lying one—no, the other moon, the cool, clear one that you can drink."

  "It would certainly have been better for me to be here," I say, leaning back and feeling peace flood into me from her. "How can you drink the moon, Isabelle?"

  "In water. It's perfectly easy. It tastes like opal. You don't really feel it in your mouth; that comes later on—then you feel it beginning to shimmer inside you. It shines out of your eyes. But you mustn't turn on a light. It wilts in the light."

  I take her hand and lay it against my temple. It is dry and cool. "How do you drink it in water?" I ask.

  Isabelle withdraws her hand. "You hold a glass of water out the window—like this." She stretches out her arm. "Then the moon is in it. You can see it, the glass lights up."

  "You mean it's reflected in it?"

  "It is not reflected. It is in it." She looks at me. "Reflected —what do you mean by reflected?"

  "A reflection is an image in a mirror. You can see your reflection in all sorts of things that are smooth. In water too. But you are not in it."

  "Things that are smooth!" Isabelle smiles, politely incredulous. "Really? Just imagine!"

  "But of course. If you stand in front of a mirror you see yourself in it too."

  Isabelle takes off one of her shoes and looks at her foot. It is narrow and long and unmarred by calluses. "Well, perhaps," she says, still politely uninterested.

  "Not perhaps. Certainly. But what you see isn't you. It is only a mirror image. Not you."

  "No, not me. But where am I when it is there?"

  "You're standing in front of it. Otherwise you couldn't see your reflection."

  Isabelle puts her shoe on again and glances up. "Are you sure of that, Rudolf?"

  "Perfectly sure."

  "I'm not. What do the mirrors do when they're alone?"

  "They reflect whatever is there."

  "And if nothing is there?"

  "That's impossible. Something is always there."

  "And at night? In the dark of the moon—when it's perfectly black, what do they reflect then?"

  "The darkness," I say, no longer completely sure of my ground, for how can there be a reflection in complete darkness? It always requires some light.

  "Then they are dead when it is completely dark?"

  "Perhaps they are asleep—and when the light comes again they wake up."

  She nods thoughtfully and draws her dress closer about her legs. "And when they dream?" she asks suddenly. "What do they dream about?"

  "Who?"

  "The mirrors."

  "I think they dream all the time," I say. "That is what they do all day long. They dream us. They dream us the other way around. What is our right is their left, and what is left is right."

  Isabelle turns around to me. "Then they are our other side?"

  I reflect. Who really knows what a mirror is? "There, you see," she says. "Just before, you said there was nothing in them. But now you admit they have our other side."

  "Only as long as we are standing in front of them. Not when we go away."

  "How do you know that?"

  "You can see it. When you go away and look back your image is no longer there."

  "What if they just hide it?"

  "How can they hide it? You know they reflect everything! That's the very reason they are mirrors. A mirror can't hide anything."

  A crease appears between Isabelle's brows. "What becomes of it then?"

  "Of what?"

  "The image! Our other side! Does it jump back into us?"

  "That I don't know."

  "It can't just get lost!"

  "It doesn't get lost."

  "What becomes of it then?" she asked more insistently. "Is it in the mirror?"

  "No. There's nothing left in the mirror."

  "It might be there just the same! What makes you so sure? After all, you can't see it when you are away."

  "Other people can see that it's no longer there. They only

  see their own image when they stand in front of a mirror. Not someone else's."

  "They cover it with their own. But where is mine? It must be there after all!"

  "It is there, of course," I say, regretting that we have got on this subject. "When you step in front of the mirror again it appears there too."

  Isabelle is suddenly very excited. She kneels on the bench and bends forward. Her silhouette is black and slender against the narcissus, whose color looks sulphurous in the sultry night. "So it is there after all! lust now you said it wasn't."