The Black Obelisk

by Erich Maria Remarque

  I shake my head. If I sent them to Isabelle, she would think her enemies were attempting something underhanded—and I haven't seen Gerda in so long a time she would misinterpret the gesture. There's no one else I know.

  "Really not?" Lisa asks.

  "Really not."

  "You bird of bad luck! But don't take it too hard! I think you're going to grow up."

  "When is one grown up?"

  Lisa considers this for a moment. "When you think more of yourself than of others," she croaks, slamming the window.

  I toss another succession of sevenths, this time in a minor key, through the window. They have no visible effect. I close the piano and wander downstairs again. Wilke's light is still on. I climb up to his shop. "How did the problem of the twins turn out?" I ask.

  "Tiptop. The mother won. The twins were buried in their double coffin. In the municipal cemetery, not the Catholic, to be sure. Funny that the mother bought a grave in the Catholic cemetery first—she ought to have known it wouldn't work when one of the twins was Evangelical. Now she has the first grave on her hands."

  "The one in the Catholic cemetery?"

  "Of course. It's excellent—dry, sandy, with a lot of aristocrats lying nearby. She's lucky to have it!"

  "What for? For herself and her husband? She'll want to be buried in the municipal cemetery because of the twins."

  "As a capital asset," Wilke says, impatient at my stupidity. "Today a grave is a first-class asset, everyone knows that! She could make a profit of a couple of million right now if she wanted to sell. Commodities are rising like mad!"

  "Right. I'd forgotten about that for the moment. Why are you still here?"

  Wilke points to a coffin. "For Werner, the banker. Cerebral hemorrhage. Expense no object, solid silver fittings, finest workmanship, real silk, overtime price—how about helping me out? Kurt Bach isn't here. In return you can sell them a monument tomorrow morning. No one knows about it yet. It happened after business hours."

  "Not tonight. I'm dead tired. Go to the Red Mill a little before midnight, come back at one o'clock and finish up then —that will solve the problem of the ghostly hour."

  Wilke thinks it over. "Not bad," he announces. "But won't I need a tuxedo?"

  "Not even in your dreams."

  Wilke shakes his head. "Out of the question just the same! That one hour would cost me more than I'll make in the whole night. But I might go to a bar."

  He looks at me gratefully. "Put down Werner's address," he says.

  I write it down. Strange, I think, this is the second time tonight that someone has taken my advice—only I haven't any for myself. "It's odd you're so afraid of ghosts," I say, "when you're something of a freethinker."

  "Only during the day. Not at night. Who is a freethinker at night?"

  I point toward Kurt Bach's room below us. Wilke shakes his head. "It's easy to be a freethinker when you're young. But at my age, with a rupture and encapsulated tuberculosis—"

  "Do a turnabout. The Church loves repentant sinners."

  Wilke lifts his shoulders. "Then what would become of my self-respect?"

  I laugh. "You have none at night, eh?"

  "Who has any at night? You?"

  "No. But perhaps a night watchman, or a baker who plies his trade at night. Do you absolutely have to have self-respect?"

  "Naturally. After all, I am a human being. Only animals and suicides haven't any. It's a miserable thing, this division! However, tonight I'm going to try Blume's Restaurant. The beer there is excellent."

  I wander back across the dark courtyard. In front of the obelisk there is a pale shimmer. It is Lisa's wreath of flowers. She has put it there before going to the Red Mill. For a moment I stand undecided; then I pick it up. The thought that Knopf might desecrate it is too much. I take it to my room and put it in a terra-cotta urn I bring up with me from the office. The flowers at once take over the whole room. There I sit with the brown and yellow and white chrysanthemums that smell of earth and of the cemetery as though I were about to be buried! But in fact haven't I buried something?

  By midnight the scent is too much for me. I see that Wilke has gone out to spend the ghostly hour in the bar. I pick up the flowers and take them into his workroom. The door is open. The light is still on so that the ghost dreader will not be terrified when he comes back. A bottle of beer is standing on the giant's coffin. I drink it, put glass and bottle on the window sill and open the window so that it will look as though some ghost had grown thirsty. Then I strew the chrysanthemums all the way from the window to Banker Werner's half-finished coffin, and at the end I set down a handful of valueless thousand-mark notes. Let Wilke make what he can of that! If it results in Werner's coffin not being ready on time, that won't matter—the banker used the inflation to cheat dozens of small householders out of their meager possessions.

  19.

  "Would you like to see something that will touch your heart almost like a Rembrandt?" Georg asks. "Go ahead."

  He unfolds his pocket handkerchief and lets an object fall ringing on the table. It takes me a while to recognize it. I gaze at it with emotion. It is a gold twenty-mark piece. The last time I saw one was before the war. "Those were the days!" I say. "Peace reigned, security prevailed, insults to His Majesty were still punishable by imprisonment, the steel helmet was unknown, our mothers wore corsets and their blouses had high, whalebone-stiffened collars, dividends were paid, the mark was as untouchable as God, and every quarter you contentedly clipped the coupons from your government bonds and were paid in gold. Let me kiss you, you glittering symbol of a vanished era!"

  I weigh the gold piece in my hand. It bears the likeness of Wilhelm n, who is now sawing wood in Holland and growing a pointed beard. On the coin he still wears the proudly waxed mustache which once meant: It has been achieved. It certainly has been achieved. "Where did you get it?" I ask.

  "From a widow who inherited a whole chest of them."

  "Good God! What're they worth?"

  "Four billion paper marks apiece. A small house, or a dozen beautiful women. A week at the Red Mill. Eight months' pension for one of the severely wounded war—"

  "Enough—"

  Heinrich Kroll enters, the bicycle clips on his striped pants. "This will enchant your loyal, subservient heart," I say, sending the golden bird spinning to him through the air. He catches it and stares at it with tear-filled eyes. "His Majesty," he says with emotion. "Those were the days! We still had our army!"

  "Apparently they were different days for different people," I reply.

  Heinrich looks at me reproachfully. "You'll have to admit they were better days than these!"

  "Possibly!"

  "Not possibly! Certainly! We had order, we had a stable currency, we had no unemployed, but a thriving economy

  instead, and we were a respected people. Won't you agree to that?"

  "At once."

  "Well then! What have we today?"

  "Disorder, seven million unemployed, a false economy, and we are a conquered people," I reply.

  Heinrich is taken aback. He hadn't thought it would be so easy. "Well then," he repeats. "Today we are sitting in the muck and then we were living on the fat of the land. Even you can probably draw the logical conclusion, can't you?"

  "I'm not sure. What is it?"

  "It's damn simple! That we must have a Kaiser and a decent national government again!"

  "Hold on!" I say. "You've forgotten something. You've forgotten the important word because. That is the heart of the evil. It's the reason that today millions like you raise their trunks again and trumpet this nonsense. The little word because."

  "What's that?" Heinrich asks blankly.

  "Because!" I repeat. "The word because! Today we have seven million unemployed and inflation and we have been conquered because we had the national government you love so much! Because that government in its megalomania made war! Because we had your beloved blockheads and puppets in uniform as our government! And we must n
ot have them back to make things go better; instead we must be careful that they don't come back, because otherwise they will drive us into war again and into the muck again. You and your friends say: Yesterday things went well; today they are going badly—so let's have the old government back. But in reality it should be: Today things are going badly because yesterday we had the old government—so to hell with it! Catch on? The little word because! That's something your friends like to forget! Because!"

  "Nonsense!" Heinrich splutters in rage. "You communist!"

  Georg breaks into wild laughter. "For Heinrich everyone is a communist who isn't on the extreme right."

  Heinrich inflates his chest for an armored retort. The image of the Kaiser has made him strong. At this moment, however, Kurt Bach comes in. "Herr Kroll," he asks Heinrich, "is the angel to stand at the right or left of the text: 'Here lies Master Tinsmith Quartz'?"

  "What's that?"

  "The bas-relief angel on Quartz's tombstone."

  "On the right, of course," Georg says. "Angels always stand on the right."

  Heinrich exchanges the role of national prophet for that of tombstone salesman. "I'll come with you," he announces ill-humoredly and puts the gold piece back on the table. Kurt Bach sees it and picks it up. "Those were the days!" he says enthusiastically.

  "So, for you too," Georg replies. "What sort of days were they, then, for you?"

  "The days of free art! Bread cost pfennigs, schnaps a fiver, life was full of ideals, and with a couple of those gold pieces you could travel to the blessed land of Italy without any fear that they would be worthless when you got there."

  Bach kisses the eagle, lays the coin back, and grows ten years older. Heinrich and he disappear. As a parting shot Heinrich calls from the door, a darkly threatening look on his fat face: "Heads will roll yet!"

  "What was that?" I ask Georg in amazement. "Wasn't it one of Watzek's favorite phrases? Are we, perhaps, about to see the embattled cousins joining forces?"

  Georg stares thoughtfully after Heinrich. "Perhaps," he says. "Then it will become dangerous. Do you know what's so hopeless? In 1918 Heinrich was a rabid opponent of the war. Since then he has forgotten everything that made him oppose it, and the war has become a jolly adventure." He puts the twenty-mark piece into his vest pocket. "Everything you survive becomes an adventure. It makes one sick! And the more horrible it was, the more adventurous it seems in recollection. Only the dead could really judge the war; they alone experienced it completely."

  He looks at me. "Experienced?" I say. "Expired."

  "They and the ones who have not forgotten it," he goes on. "But there are very few of them. Our damnable memory is a sieve. It wants to survive. And survival is only possible through forgetfulness."

  He put his hat on. "Come along," he says. "We'll see what sort of days our gold bird will'call up in Eduard Knobloch's memory.

  "Isabelle!" I say deeply astonished.

  I see her sitting on the terrace in front of the pavilion for the incurables. There is no trace of the twitching, tormented creature I saw last time. Her eyes are clear, her face is calm, and she seems to me more beautiful than I have ever seen her—but this may be because of the contrast to last time.

  It has rained during the afternoon and the garden is glistening with moisture and sunlight. Above the city, clouds float against a pure, medieval blue, and the whole fenestrated front of the building has been transformed into a gallery of mirrors. Unconcerned about the hour, Isabelle is wearing an evening dress of very soft black material and her golden shoes. On her right arm hangs a bracelet of emeralds—it must be worth more than our whole business, including the inventory, the buildings, and the income for the next five years. She has never worn it before. It's a day of rarities, I think. First the golden Wilhelm II and now this! But the bracelet does not move me.

  "Do you her them?" Isabelle asks. "They have drunk deep and well and now they are calm and satisfied and at peace. They are humming deeply like a million bees."

  "Who?"

  "The trees and all the bushes. Didn't you hear them screaming yesterday when it was so dry?"

  "Can they scream?"

  "Naturally. Couldn't you hear it?"

  "No," I say, looking at her bracelet, which sparkles as though it had green eyes.

  Isabelle laughs. "Oh, Rudolf, you hear so little!" she says tenderly. "Your ears have grown shut like a boxwood hedge. And then you make so much noise too—that's why you hear nothing."

  "I make noise? How do you mean?"

  "Not with words. But in other ways you make a dreadful amount of noise, Rudolf. Often one can hardly stand you. You make more noise than the hydrangeas when they are thirsty, and they're really terrific screamers."

  "What is it in me that makes the noise?"

  "Everything. Your wishes, your heart, your dissatisfaction, your vanity, your uncertainty—"

  "Vanity?" I say. "I'm not vain."

  "Of course you are—"

  "Absolutely not!" I reply, knowing that what I'm saying is untrue.

  Isabelle kisses me quickly. "Don't make me tired, Rudolf! You're always so precise with words. Besides, you're not really named Rudolf, are you? What is your name?"

  "Ludwig," I say in surprise. It is the first time she has asked me.

  "Yes, Ludwig. Aren't you sometimes tired of your name?"

  "To be sure. Of myself too."

  She nods as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "Then go ahead and change it. Why not be Rudolf? Or someone else. Take a trip. Go to another country. Each name is a different country."

  "I happen to be called Ludwig. How can I change that? Everyone here knows it."

  She appears not to have heard me. "I, too, am going to go away soon," she says. "I feel it. I am weary and weary of my weariness. Everything is beginning to be a little empty and full of leave-taking and melancholy and waiting."

  I look at her and suddenly feel a quick fear. What does she mean? "Doesn't everyone change continually?" I ask.

  She looks over toward the city. "That's not what I mean, Rudolf. I think there is another kind of change. A greater one. One that is like death. I think it is death."

  She shakes her head without looking at me. "It smells of it everywhere," she whispers. "Even in the trees and the mist. It drips at night from Heaven. The shadows are full of it. And there is weariness in one's joints. It has slipped in unobserved. I don't like to walk any more, Rudolf. It was nice with you, even when you did not understand me. At least you were there. Otherwise I should have been quite alone."

  I do not know what she means. It is a strange moment. Everything is suddenly very quiet, not a leaf moves. Only Isabelle's hand with its long fingers swings over the arm of the cane chair and the green stones of her bracelet ring softly. The setting sun gives her face a tint of such warmth that it is the very opposite of any thought of death—and yet it seems to me as though a coolness were spreading like a silent dread, as though Isabelle may no longer by there when the wind begins to blow again—but then it suddenly moves in the treetops, it rustles, the ghost is gone, and Isabelle straightens up and smiles. "There are many ways to die," she says. "Poor Rudolf! You know only one. Happy Rudolfl Come, let's go into the house."

  "I love you very much," I say.

  Her smile deepens. "Call it what you like. What is the wind and what is stillness? They are so different and yet both are the same thing. For a while I have ridden on the painted horses of the carrousel and I have sat in the golden gondolas that are lined with blue satin and turn round and round and move up and down at the same time. You don't like them, do you?"

  "No, I used to prefer the varnished stags and lions. But with you I would ride in the gondolas."

  She kisses me. "The music!" She says softly. "And the lights of the carrousel in the mist! What has become of our youth, Rudolf?"