“Prosit!” he said. “Excuse me! To your health!”
He raised his glass shoulder high, bowed forward, touched his glass to mine and looked at me. Then he moved it to his mouth and emptied it.
He continued, “Permit me to introduce myself. I’m doctor Hauer, or more correctly, Assistant Judge Hauer. The day before yesterday I passed my Assistant Judge exam!”
“My congratulations Assistant Judge,” I said.
He laughed, “Oh, thank you, thank you very much! I’ve submitted my papers and it only needs to be finalized by my old superior. Still that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I collect curves. It is my life’s work!”
“An excellent life’s work,” I confirmed. “A highly meritorious life’s work!”
I had no idea what he was talking about. I only wanted to keep the conversation flowing for the love of humanity and so the love starved, Ivy playing maiden behind us could gain a quarter of an hour. So she could kiss her little friend to her heart’s content.
“So you collect curves? How many do you have already?”
Seven hundred and thirty-two individual curves!” The Assistant Judge replied proudly. “Of these, a half dozen are truly remarkable, noteworthy, and collectable curves. I believe that my collection is one of the best in the world.”
“Doubtless,” I growled. “And you will certainly collect still more of them!”
“Still more?” he laughed. “Most certainly! Still a thousand times as many! I am now very free, Sir. I have wealth enough and can devote all of my time to this great pursuit. It is a great task but I will succeed. I will never marry, my wife is the curve!”
“A most enchanting wife!” I nodded. “We must toast to Mrs. Curve, only I advise you not to bring her back to Prag!”
We drank, then he gave me a piece of paper and a pencil.
“Please, your curve!” he repeated. “I knew that you would be here tonight. It’s the only reason I came here. I’ve been sitting behind you for an hour already but didn’t want to disturb you.
By the way, I was very lucky today. I met Max Liebman and Frank Wedekind here today. Already I’ve gotten eight very interesting curves, genuinely famous names.”
He held some sheets of paper out to me. Each one had a wavy line penciled on it and a name printed underneath. I thought, “I can do this for the Assistant Judge”. So I took the pencil, made a wavy line on the sheet of paper and gave it back to him. It looked like this:
“Twenty Marks please,” I said and held out my hand.
“Twenty Marks?” The Assistant Judge looked very astounded. “I’ve never paid anything for a curve.”
“You haven’t?” I looked just as astounded. “Really? You haven’t? You, yourself, were just telling me how valuable your curve collection was. I am sorry but I can’t give you my curve for less than twenty Marks!”
The Assistant Judge gave me a gold piece. I threw it to the barkeeper. He immediately disappeared through a door and returned with a bottle of Ayala. The curve collector was absorbed in his new treasure.
“Magnificent!” he murmured. “Extremely instructive! Yours reminds me very much of the curve of Saharet, the dancer. So you also begin with an eight?”
Naturally I nodded. Why shouldn’t I begin with it? With an eight or an eighty, what difference would it make? It was all the same to me!
“This sequence, two, six, one, is very curious!” he continued and compared my curve to the others.
“Leiberman has two, one and six at the end.”
I said, “That’s not bad either, two, one, six! Also very magnificent and noteworthy!”
The Assistant Judge stuck the papers in his briefcase.
“Believe me,” he sighed. “I wish to heaven that I knew what Beethoven would say if I brought him this collection of curves!”
I had slowly become curious and now I wanted to know the real reason the Assistant Judge was collecting curves. But I couldn’t ask, couldn’t let him know that I had only sold him a wavy line for twenty Marks.
I answered, “Beethoven would certainly be extremely overjoyed. I don’t believe that he himself ever had such a beautiful collection of curves.”
“Did Beethoven have a curve collection?” he asked. “I’ve never heard of it!”
“I haven’t either,” I answered back. “But why shouldn’t he have had one?”
“Really!” the Assistant Judge said wistfully. “I wonder if he ever made a curve of his symphonies?”
Hmm! The curves of this enraptured collector somehow had something to do with Beethoven and his symphonies. I resolved to get to the bottom of this mystery under all circumstances.
“Do you by any chance have part of your curve collection in there?” I asked harmlessly.
Obligingly he pulled out his briefcase.
“I have none with me but I can quickly show you one!”
He scribbled on a piece of paper. Here, this is the average curve of District Court II in Berlin! It is the average of all the Judges, Public Prosecutors, Attorneys, Assistant Judges, and Justice of the Peace. Extremely interesting isn’t it?”
“A stroke of brilliance!” I said. “A very intelligent curve! Genuinely Judicial!”
“Judicial!” the Assistant Judge mused, “Yes, it is somewhat judicial!”
I contemplated the paper. A light went on. Perhaps the numbers belonged to the nine symphonies of Beethoven!
“The Honorable Jurists begin with a one,” I said somewhat uncertainly.
“Yes,” confirmed the Assistant Judge. “They are inclined to the 1st symphony the most and the least to the 5th symphony! Think about that! The 5th! Remarkable, isn’t it?”
“Judicial, even,” I replied.
I now understood his idea. The curve signified a graphical representation of how an individual or an entire group of people ranked the symphonies of Beethoven!
Those that most love joy will begin their curve with the “Eroica”, the “F-major”or the “Pastoral”. The curve will climb, sink and again rise and the end will mark those least enjoyed.
“What else do you have in your curve collection, Sir Assistant Judge?” I asked.
“Oh, I have the average curve of the current Heidelburg student body! More distant, the 1902 Student Corps delegation to Bad Kösen! Each time it is a lot of work to take every single curve individually and then calculate the average of hundreds. But I do it all gladly, I want to create a cultural value.”
“A cultural value of the highest degree!” I cried enthusiastically. “Just think, Sir Assistant Judge, of the possibilities this can open up for you! This year you can travel to all the German universities, take the curves of all the students. Then you can calculate the average curve of the Kösen delegates for 1903. If you do this every year I am convinced that the fluctuations in the average curves will provide extraordinarily important information!”
“An excellent idea!” the Assistant Judge cried. “I will do it!”
“And then do the same for all of German society. Just think, The German social curve for 1904, for 1905! Beethoven and the behavior of our times! You will be able to determine which symphony’s influence is stronger on the general population, on the intellectuals, the lawmakers, the Jurists.”
“Do you really believe there is an influence?” he asked.
“Without a doubt,” I cried in honest conviction.
My words came in a flood. I was carried away by the Assistant Judge’s beautiful idea.
“You must not stop with that Dear Sir! You have to organize polls! Set up an office. Calculate the Metal Workers Union, The Bavarian Farmer’s League, the Berlin Streetcar operators. Oh, you will find assistance; such great ideas deserve and always find support! You can petition the Imperial Parliament, the Upper House of the West German Parliament. Have it included in the next census. Have each person draw their own curve to find how they are influenced by the symphonies of Beethoven!
Think about it Sir, think about it. An average curve for th
e entire German Reich!”
The Assistant Judge’s eyes glowed. I waved my arms around in the air and continued.
“But your prospects are still not exhausted even with all that, Sir! You can write a brochure and have it translated into all the languages of the world. Your idea would not only open a path in Germany, but seize all the countries of the world. Each census would divide and record the average curve for each country. You could then have the average curve of the English, the French, the Russian and the Chinese! Yes, in time, you could even have the average curve of the entire world!
Just think what wonderful special curves you could calculate out of such marvelous statistical material. For example: The curve of everyone over eighty years old living in New Guinea! The special curve of the Association of Oyster Merchants in New York!
Dear God! What highlights, what opportunities! The subject has so many interesting possibilities! You could compare the influence of Beethoven’s symphonies to the occupation of oyster merchants as an occupation or as individuals! Or you could explain the remarkable concurrence between the average curve of Venezuelan midwives to the curve of Prussian Guard Officers! Or determine if the average curve of Russian female civil servants shows the same preference for the D-minor Symphony as the inmates at the Federal penitentiary in Sing Sing, New York or La Roquete, Paris or Moabit, Berlin.
It is Doctoral work Dear Sir, Doctoral work!”
The Assistant Judge quietly shook my hand. Two fat tears crept over his red cheeks and moistened his beautifully curled mustache.
“Thank you,” he sobbed. “Thank you so much! You understand my passion. A golden future lies before me. The entire earth belongs to me, to me and my curve!”
“Only the earth?” I cried. “You don’t believe in heaven? You? A Royal Prussian Assistant Judge? I say to you, there is a heaven and you will go there, as certain as your great idea will conquer the earth, it will also conquer heaven!
In heaven you can get the curves of Shakespeare, Goethe, Bismark, Dante, Napoleon, Cervantes, old Fritz himself and the divine Rosa Freiin of Aretin would record hers! You could take the average curve of the Thirty-one Egyptian Dynasties and all the workers of the tower of Babel! The average curve of the Hohenstaufen’s, the Stewart’s, the Barmekiden’s!
Also the average curve of the celestial spheres, visit Mars, then Saturn, the Great Bear and Little Bear. You could hollow out an entire star and use it’s interior as a colossal curve archive!
You must go Sir, go! You are a great man and I hate all great men because I envy them!”
The Assistant Judge stood up, wiped the tears from his eyes. He quietly shook my hand and then left. I turned my head a little and squinted at the Turkish maiden.
Oh yes, she had played curve today as well; the living image of a curve. She had begun with the 9th symphony, “Choral”, and had transitioned to the “Eroica”, had courageously conquered her Red Cross shyness and boldly subdued the handsome little painter. He now lay stretched out on the carpet, fast asleep with his head in her lap. The Turkish maiden’s long fine hands glided again and again through his blonde locks and she sang to him, very lightly, a lullaby, the 6th symphony “Pastoral”.
My Burial
Three days before my death I sent a postcard to the “Red Riders”. Even so, this story should really have occurred in Berlin! The “Berliner” is refined. They say “lift” instead of “elevator”. They are “Gents” and on no account “Gentlemen”. When they want something done they send a dispatch to the “Messenger Boy Institute”.
You can gather from that why this story never happened in Berlin. I wrote to the “Red Riders” because they sounded very nice and not to the “Messenger Boys” because they would have thrown my postcard away.
My card announced:
Three days after receipt of this card please pick up a crate for the cemetery. The presence of all Red Riders is required. Payment and further instructions will be with the crate.
Then my name and address.
The Red Riders came promptly and with them came the Chief Rider. In Berlin you would say the General Director of the Messenger Boy Institute. He was inspecting a large coffin sized crate on which I had painstakingly painted “Glass”, “Fragile”, “Caution” and “Do Not Drop”.
Naturally my corpse was in the old crate but I had not closed the cover because I wanted a beautiful funeral and needed to pay attention to make sure everything went right.
First the Chief took the gold and counted it. “Forty five Red Riders for two hours—it fits”. He put the gold in his wallet and looked at my instructions.
“No”, he said then. “It doesn’t. We don’t do this.”
I made my voice real hollow and answered from out of the crate, “The Red Riders will do anything”.
The Chief Rider was not certain where the voice had come from. He scratched his nose.
“Should I?” he said. “Should I?”
His conscience hit him. On all his advertisements it explicitly stated “The Rider Riders will do anything”. One of the boys wanted to nail the cover down but the Chief waved him back.
“Forward!” he cried and pointed to the directions. “It specifically says here the cover must stay open. I will do what I’m paid to do. There will be no black marks on my account even if it would be allowed.”
“First we say a short prayer. Do any of you know a short prayer?”
None of the Red Riders knew a short prayer.
“What about a longer one?”
But they couldn’t get a longer one right.
“The Red Riders will do anything!” I said hollowly from out of my crate.
The Chief Rider looked around. “But of course!” he cried quickly.
“There is still a beautiful one if the Red Riders can’t come up with anything else.”
He turned to all the youngsters.
“Frtiz, you certainly know a prayer?”
“I know a prayer all right,” opinioned the urchin. “But not ordinarily for…”
“That doesn’t matter!” the Chief Rider interrupted. “Whether it is an ordinary prayer or an unordinary one, the important thing is that we pray! So say your prayer and everyone else say it with him.”
Fritz prayed and the others shouted along as loud as they could.
“Come Lord Jesus, be our guest and let these gifts to us be blessed.”
“Amen,” said the Chief Rider unctuously. “That is really an excellent prayer. Remember it for the future.”
He followed my orders completely. Then they loaded the crate on a cargo tricycle that the strongest youth drove. Fritz needed to sit on top so the cover wouldn’t fall off. All the Red Riders sprang onto their bicycles and went as fast as they could through the streets. The people cheered at the lively train of Red Riders. In my crate I thought how different is was to be so enjoyably rushing to the churchyard instead of going slowly in a black funeral carriage with ghastly mourners trotting alongside.
In twenty minutes we were there. They leaned their bicycles against the fence and the four largest carefully unloaded the crate. The Chief Rider looked at my instructions and directed:
“2nd crossroads, 8th corridor left from the main road! On the right side! Grave #48678!”
That is where the solemn procession brought the old crate. The grave was already open; a pair of large shovels were stuck in a pile of loose dirt. A single Red Rider crept into the grave and carefully placed the crate. Then they stood in a wide circle around the grave.
“Everyone light a cigarette!” the Chief Rider commanded.
Most of them had their own cigarettes and offered their tins to those that didn’t.
“I can’t smoke,” said Fritz. “It makes me—”
But I interrupted him, “The Red Riders will do anything!”
The Chief glanced around his company deeply insulted.
“Who said that?” he cried. “I will not tolerate any more useless words from any of you. Obviously the Red Rid
ers will do anything! You, Fritz, smoke! A Red Rider must smoke as well as they can pray!”
Fritz lit his cigarette and so did the others.
“Now,” said the Chief Rider looking again at his slip of paper. “Now we begin the funeral service. We sing a melody like we are in a dark gloomy forest.”
“All together—this verse:
The Red Riders will do anything—for the living and the dead— it is our job!”
They all sang so that it resounded and I sang along with them in my crate.
“Now comes the eulogy,” he continued. “Today we have the honor and great pleasure of being permitted for the first time to escort someone to their final resting place. We don’t know any more of his virtues except for the fact that his last request was to permanently set a memorial in the hearts of all Red Riders by paying them each 3 Marks and 45 pennies for two hours work. Friendly patronizing aside, on these grounds let us all join in a cheer to the blessed deceased.”
“Hurrah, Hurrah, Hurrah!”
And the Red Riders screamed, “Hurrah, Hurrah, Hurrah!”
“Very good,” said the Chief Rider. “If I were in that crate I would gratefully applaud! Now to close we will sing the favorite song of the deceased and let him sleep in the Lord.”
“Daughter of Zion be glad; Jerusalem rejoice!”
It sounded out across the cemetery to where another group was singing at the 3rd crossroads, 8 corridors down and left from the main road. That is to say, to where another funeral was taking place at grave #48679 on the left side diagonally across from me.
They were burying some honorable Privy Councillor and there was a horrendous number of people, professors, judges, military officers and wealthy industrialists—all refined people! But it was still only an old style funeral without Red Riders.
The Chief Rider waited politely until the people finished singing. Then he cried anew, “Now we sing the favorite song of the departed.”
Hanns Heinz Ewers Volume I (Collected Short Stories by Hanns Heinz Ewers) Page 6