The Black Obelisk

by Erich Maria Remarque

  "Eduard has a very fine feeling for beauty," Gerda replies.

  "So he has," I agree. "Did you have the regular lunch? Detestable Königsberger meat balls in some sort of flavorless German gravy?"

  Gerda laughs. "Eduard, show them you're a cavalier. Let me invite your two friends to lunch! They keep saying you're dreadfully stingy. Let's prove they're wrong. We have—"

  "Konigsberger meat balls," Eduard interrupts her. "All right, invite them to have meat balls. I'll see that they're extra good."

  "Saddle of venison," Gerda says.

  Eduard now resembles a defective steam engine. "These are no friends," he declares.

  "What's that?"

  "We're blood brothers like Valentin," I say. "Don't you remember our last conversation at the Poets' Club? Shall I repeat it? In what verse form are you writing now?"

  "What were you talking about?" Gerda asks. "About nothing at all," Eduard replies abruptly. "These two never say a word of truth! Jokers, miserable jokers, that's what they are! Don't you ever realize the seriousness of life?"

  "I'd like to know who realizes it more than we do, except gravediggers and coffinmakers," I say.

  "There you go! All you know about death is its ridiculous aspect," Gerda suddenly remarks, out of a clear sky. "And that's why you don't know more about the seriousness of life."

  We stare at her dumbfounded. That is unmistakably Ed-uard's style! I feel I am fighting for a lost cause, but I don't give up.

  "From whom did you hear that?" I ask. "From the sibyl beside the dark abysses of melancholy?"

  Gerda laughs. "With you life always gets around to tombstones, the first thing. That doesn't happen so fast with other people. Eduard, for example, is a nightingale!"

  A blush spreads over Eduard's fat cheeks. "Well, how about the rack of venison?" Gerda asks him.

  "Well, all right, why not?"

  Eduard disappears. I look at Gerda. "Bravo!" I say. "A first-rate job. What are we to make of it?"

  "Don't look like a husband," she replies. "Be glad you're living."

  "What is living?"

  "Whatever's happening at the moment."

  "Bravo!" Georg says. "And my warmest thanks for the invitation. We really love Eduard; he just doesn't understand us."

  "Do you love him too?" I ask Gerda.

  She laughs. "How childish he is," she says to Georg. "Can't you open his eyes a little to the fact that not everything always' belongs to him? Especially when he's not around?"

  "I try constantly to enlighten him," Georg replies. "The only trouble is he has a lot of internal handicaps which he calls ideals. If he ever happens to notice that they're euphemistic egoism, he'll improve."

  "What is euphemistic egoism?"

  "Youthful self-importance."

  Gerda laughs so hard the table shakes. "I'm rather fond of that," she remarks. "But too much of it gets tiring. After all, facts are facts."

  I refrain from asking her whether facts really are facts. She sits there, honest and secure, waiting, knife in hand, for her second portion of venison. Her face is rounder than before: she had already gained weight on Eduard's food, and she beams at me without a trace of embarrassment. And why should she be embarrassed? What kind of claim do I really have on her? And just now who is betraying whom? "It's true," I say. "I am hung with egoistic atavisms like a rock with moss. Mea culpa!"

  "Right, my pet," Gerda replies. "Enjoy your life and only think when you have to."

  "When does one have to?"

  "When one needs money or wants to get ahead in the world."

  "Bravo," Georg says again. At this moment the venison appears and conversation comes to an end. Eduard supervises us like a mother hen with its chicks. This is the first time he has not begrudged us our food. He wears a new smile that puzzles me. He is full of fat superiority, which now and then he communicates to Gerda as though it were a clandestine note exchanged in jail. But Gerda still has her old, completely open smile which, when Eduard is looking the other way, she turns on me as innocently as a child at first communion. She is younger than I am, but I have the feeling that she has at least forty years' more experience. "Eat, baby," she says.

  I eat with a bad conscience and strong misgivings; the venison, a delicacy of the first order, suddenly has no savor. "Another little piece?" Eduard asks me. "Or a little more bilberry sauce?"

  I stare at him, feeling as though my former recruiting sergeant had asked me to kiss him. Even Georg is alarmed. I know that later he will maintain that the reason for Eduard's incredible openhandedness is that he has slept with Gerda—but this time I know better. She will get rack of venison only as long as she has not allowed that. Once he has had her, the most she can expect is Königsberger meat balls with German gravy. And I am perfectly sure that Gerda knows this too.

  Nevertheless, I decide to go away with her after the meal. Trust, to be sure, is trust, but Eduard has too many different kinds of liqueur in the bar.

  Silent and star-filled, the night hangs over the city. I am seated at the window of my room waiting for Knopf, for whose benefit I have arranged the rain pipe. It extends straight into my window and thence runs above the entrance gate to Knopf's house where the short end makes a right-angle turn in the direction of the courtyard. It cannot, however, be seen from the courtyard.

  I wait, reading the newspaper. The dollar has clambered up another ten thousand marks. Yesterday there was only one suicide, but to make up for it there were two strikes. After long negotiations the government employees have finally received an increase in pay which, in the meantime, has fallen so far in value that now they can barely get an extra liter of milk a week for it. Very likely no more than a box of matches next week. The number of unemployed has risen by an additional hundred and fifty thousand. Unrest has broken out through the whole Reich. New recipes for the use of garbage in the kitchen are being recommended. The wave of grippe is still on the rise. A pension increase for the aged and infirm has been turned over to a committee for further study. Their report is expected in a few months. Meanwhile, the pensioners and invalids try to keep from starvation by begging or by borrowing from friends and relatives.

  Outside, there is the sound of soft footsteps. I peer cautiously out of the window. It is not Knopf; it is a pair of lovers stealing on tiptoe through the courtyard into the garden. The season is now in full swing, and lovers' necessities are more pressing than ever. Wilke was right: where are they to go to be undisturbed? If they try to slip into their furnished rooms, the landlady lies in wait to drive them out, like an angel with a flaming sword, in the name of morality and envy—in the public parks and gardens, they would be shouted at by the police or arrested—and they haven't enough money for a hotel room—so where are they to go? In our courtyard they are undisturbed. The larger memorials furnished seclusion from other couples; there they are not seen and can lean against the monuments and in their shadow whisper and embrace. The big memorial crosses are always there for stormy lovers on wet days when they cannot lie on the ground; then the girls hold onto them and are pressed close by their wooers, the rain beats upon their heated faces, mist drifts around them, their breath comes in quick pants, and their heads are held high like those of whinnying horses by their lovers' hands in their hair. The signs I have put up recently have done no good. Who worries about his toes when his whole being is aflame?

  Suddenly I hear Knopfs footsteps in the alley. I look at the clock. It is half-past two; that slave driver of generations of unhappy recruits must be well loaded. I turn out the light Inexorably Knopf steers his course straight for the black obelisk. I seize the end of the rain pipe, press my mouth close to the opening and say: "Knopf!"

  It makes a hollow sound at the other end, behind the sergeant major's back, as though it came from the grave. Knopf looks around; he can't see where the voice is coming from. "Knopf!" I repeat. "You pig! Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Did I create you to get drunk and piss on tombstones, you sow?"

  Knopf whirls ar
ound again. "What?" He stammers. "Who is that?"

  "Filthy loafer!" I say, and it sounds ghostly and supernatural. "How dare you ask questions! Is it your place to question your superiors? Stand at attention when I address you!"

  Knopf stares at his house, whence the voice comes. All the windows are dark and closed. The door, too, is closed. He cannot see the pipe on the wall. "Stand at attention, you insubordinate scoundrel of a sergeant major!" I say. "Was it for this I bestowed on you braid for your collar and a long saber, so that you could defile monuments destined to stand in God's acre?" And more sharply in a hissing tone of command: "Heels together, you worthless tombstone wetter!"

  The tone of command has its effect. Knopf comes to attention, his hand at the seams of his trousers. The moon is reflected in his wide-open eyes. "Knopf," I say in ghostly tones, "you will be degraded to second-class private if I catch you at it again! You blot on the honor of the German soldier and the United Association of Retired Sergeants Major."

  Knopf listens, his head extended sidewise, like a moonstruck hound. "The Kaiser?" he whispers.

  "Button up your pants and vanish!" I whisper hollowly. "And mark you this! Indulge in your nastiness just once more and you will be degraded and castrated. Castrated, I say! And now off with you, you slovenly civilian! Forward march!"

  In consternation Knopf stumbles toward the door of his house. Immediately thereafter the pair of lovers start up out of the garden like two startled does and rush into the street. That, of course, was no part of my plan.

  14.

  The Poets' Club is meeting at Eduard's. The expedition to the bordello has been decided on. Otto Bambuss hopes to achieve a blood transfusion for his verse; Hans Hungermann wants to gain inspiration for his "Casanova" and for a free-verse cycle to be called "The Demon Woman"—and even Mathias Grand, the author of the "Book of Death," thinks he can pick up a few racy details for the final delirium of a paranoiac. "Why don't you come along, Eduard?" I ask.

  "Don't need to," he announces in a superior fashion. "I'm well taken care of as it is."

  "Really? Are you?" I know what he is trying to convey and I know it is a lie.

  "He sleeps with all the chambermaids in his hotel," Hungermann explains. "If they refuse he dismisses them. He is a true friend of the people."

  "Chambermaids! That's your style! Free verse, free love! Not I! Never in my own house! That's an old axiom." "What about guests?"

  "Guests." Eduard turns his eyes toward heaven. "There, of course, you often can't help yourself. The Countess von Bell-Armin, for example—""For example of what?" I ask as he falls silent Eduard demurs. "A cavalier is discreet." Hungermann is overcome by an attack of coughing. "A fine discretion! How old is she? Eighty?"

  Eduard smiles scornfully—but the next moment his smile drops from his face like a mask with a broken cord: Valentin Busch has entered. He, to be sure, is no man of letters, but nevertheless he has decided to come with us. He wants to be present when Otto Bambuss loses his virginity. "How goes it, Eduard?" he asks. "Nice that you're still alive, eh? Otherwise you wouldn't have been able to enjoy that affair with the countess."

  "How do you know about it?" I ask in surprise. "I overheard you outside in the hall. You're talking pretty loud. No doubt you've had quite a bit to drink. However, I do not begrudge Eduard the countess. I'm just happy that it was I who could rescue him for that."

  "It was long before the war," Eduard declares quickly. He scents a new attack on his wine cellar.

  "All right, all right," Valentin replies agreeably. "Since the war you've no doubt had some fine experiences too." "In times like these?"

  "Especially in times like these! When a person is desperate he is more open to adventure. And countesses, princesses, and duchesses are especially desperate just now. Inflation, the republic, no more imperial army, that's enough to break an aristocratic heart! How about a good bottle, Eduard?"

  "I haven't time just now," Eduard replies with presence of mind. "Sorry, Valentin, but it won't do tonight. The club is making an expedition."

  "Are you going along?" I ask.

  "Of course! As treasurer! I have to, after all! Just didn't think of it a moment ago! Duty is duty."

  I laugh. Valentin winks at me and says nothing about coming with us. Eduard smiles because he thinks he has saved himself a bottle. Thus everything is in complete harmony.

  We get up and leave. It is a splendid evening. We are going to No. 12 Bahnstrasse. The city has two cat houses, but the one in Bahnstrasse is the more elegant. Situated outside the city, it is a small house surrounded by poplar trees. I know it well; I spent part of my youth there without knowing what it was. On afternoons when we had no school we used to go out of the city to fish and look for salamanders in the streams and ponds and butterflies and beetles in the fields. On one particularly hot day, in search of an inn where we could get lemonade, we arrived at No. 12 Bahnstrasse. The big taproom on the ground floor looked like any other taproom. It was cool, and when we asked for soft drinks we got them. After a while a number of women in morning gowns or flowery clothes came in too. They asked us what we were doing and what class we were in at school. We paid for our drinks and came back again on the next hot day, this time with the books we had taken with us to study outdoors beside a stream. The kindly women were there again and took a motherly interest in us. We found the place cool and agreeable, and since no one but us was there in the afternoons, we stayed and began to do our lessons. The women looked over our shoulders and helped us as though they were our teachers. They saw to it that we did our written exercises, they checked up on our marks, they listened to us recite what we had to learn by heart, and gave us chocolate when we were good or, on occasion, a gentle cuff on the ear when we were lazy. We thought nothing of it; we were still at that happy age when women mean nothing. After a short time, these ladies, smelling of violets and roses, assumed the roles of mother and teacher; they were very much interested in us, and the moment we appeared at the door one of these goddesses was likely to ask excitedly: "How did the geography class go? All right?" At that time my mother was in the hospital a great deal, and so it happened that I got part of my education in the Werdenbrück cat house, and I can only say that it was stricter than if I had got it at home. We went there for two summers, then we began to take long bikesand so had less time, and my family moved to another part of the city.

  After that I was in Bahnstrasse on one other occasion, during the war. It was the day before we were to go to the front. We were just eighteen, some of us not quite eighteen, and most of us had never been with a woman. But we didn't want to be shot without knowing something about it and therefore we went, five in number, to Bahnstrasse, which we already knew from that earlier time. Business was brisk there and we were served with schnaps and beer. After we had drunk enough to feel courageous we decided to make our bid for happiness. Willy, more enterprising than the rest of us, was the first. He stopped Fritzi, the most seductive of the ladies present. "Darling, how about it?"

  "Sure," Frizi replied through the noise and smoke, without really looking at him. "Have you the money?"

  "More than enough." Willy showed her his pay and the money his mother had given him to have a mass said for his safe return from the war.

  "Well then! Long live the fatherland!" Fritzi said somewhat absently, looking in the direction of the beer bar. "Come upstairs!"

  Willy got up and put his cap on the table. Fritzi stared at his fiery red hair. It was of a unique brilliance and, of course, she recognized it at once even after seven years. "Just a minute," she said. "Isn't your name Willy?"

  "Absolutely!" Willy declared beaming.

  "And didn't you use to do your schoolwork here?"

  "Right!"

  "So—and now you want to come up to my room with me?"

  "Of course! We already know each other."

  Willy was grinning all over. The next second he received a terrific blow on the ear. "You pig!" Fritzi said. "You want to come to bed
with me? That's the limit!"

  "What do you mean?" Willy stammered. "All the others—"

  "All the others? What do they matter to me? Have I studied the catechism with them? Have I done their homework? Have I seen to it that they didn't catch cold, you snot-nosed rascal?"

  "But now I'm seventeen and a half—"

  "Shut up! Why, it's like wanting to rape your mother! Out of here, you juvenile delinquent!"