The Black Obelisk (16 page)

"What? Did Beste shoot? That damned socialist!" "No! Beste is—he's bleeding—" "No one else?" "No, just Beste—"

Döbbeling's face brightens. "Well then! No reason to shout so loud!"

"He can't get up. He's bleeding from the mouth." "Got punched in his fresh snout," the little clerk explains. "Why does he always have to be so irritating? We're coming. Just take it easy."

"You will excuse me, I feel sure," Döbbeling says with dignity to us. "This is official business. I have to investigate the matter. We must postpone our business."

He puts on his coat, sure that he is now through with us for good. We go out with him. He is in no great hurry, and we know why. When he arrives no one will remember who beat up Beste. It is an old story.

Beste is lying in the narrow hallway of his house. The flag of the republic lies beside him torn in two. A number of people are standing in front of the house. None of the Iron Guard is present. "What happened?" Döbbeling asks a policeman, standing beside the door, notebook in hand.

The policeman is about to report. "Were you present?" Döbbeling asks.

"No. I was called later."

"Very good. So you know nothing. Who was present?"

No one replies. "Aren't you going to send for a doctor?" Georg asks.

Döbbeling gives him a hostile glance. "Is that necessary? A little water—"

"It is necessary. The man is dying."

Döbbeling turns around hastily and bends over Beste. "Dying?"

"Dying. He has a bad hemorrhage. Perhaps there are broken bones as well. It looks as though he had been thrown down the stairs."

Döbbeling gives Georg a slow look. "That is simply your supposition, Herr Kroll, and nothing more. We'll let the medical examiner decide the matter."

"And what about a doctor for this man?"

"Let me take care of that. I happen to be the mayor and not you. Fetch Doctor Bredius," Döbbeling says to two boys with bicycles. "Tell him there has been an accident."

We wait. Bredius comes up on the bicycle of one of the boys. He jumps off and goes into the hall. "The man is dead," he says, straightening up.

"Dead?"

"Yes, dead. It's Beste, isn't it? The one who was wounded in the lungs."

The mayor nods uncomfortably. "It's Beste. I know nothing about any wound in the lungs. But perhaps he had a shock—no doubt his heart was weak—"

"You don't get a hemorrhage from that," Bredius declares dryly. "What happened?"

"We're just looking into that. Will everyone please leave except those who can give evidence as witnesses." He looks at Georg and me.

"We'll come back later," I say.

Almost all the people who have been standing around leave with us. There won't be many witnesses.

We are sitting in the Niedersachsiscber Hof. Georg is angrier than I have seen him in a long time. A young workman comes in and sits down at our table. "Were you there?" Georg asks.

"I was there when Wolkenstein was egging the crowd on to pull down the flag. Wiping out that stain of infamy, he called it."

"Did Wolkenstein go along?"

"No."

"Of course not. What about the others?"

"A whole bunch went storming over to Beste's house. They had all been drinking."

"And then?"

"I think Beste tried to defend himself. They probably really didn't intend to kill him. But then it just happened. Beste was trying to hold onto the flag and they pushed him and it down the stairs together. Perhaps they gave him a few clouts as well. When you've been drinking you often don't know your own strength. They certainly didn't intend to kill him."

"They just wanted to give him something to remember them by?"

"Yes. Exactly that."

"That's what Wolkenstein told them to do, eh?"

The workman nods and then looks alarmed. "How do you know that?"

"I can imagine. That's how it was, wasn't it?"

The workman is silent. "If you know, why do you ask me?" he says finally.

"There ought to be a precise record. Homicide is something for the prosecuting attorney. And so is incitement to homicide."

The workman recoils. "I'll have nothing to do with that. I don't know anything."

"You know a lot. And there are other people who know what happened too."

The workman finishes his beer. "I haven't said anything," he announces with determination. "And I don't know anything. What do you think would happen to me if I didn't keep my trap shut? No sir, not I! I have a wife and a child and I have to live. Do you think I could find a job if I started to babble? No sir, look for someone else! Not me!"

He disappears. "That's how it will be with all of them," Georg says.

We wait. Outside we see Wolkenstein walking by. He is no longer in uniform and is carrying a brown handbag. "Where is he going?" I ask.

"To the station. He no longer lives in Wüstringen. He has moved to Werdenbrück. Now he's district president of the veterans' organizations. He only came here for the dedication. He has his uniform in that suitcase."

Kurt Bach appears with the girl. They have brought flowers in with them. The girl is inconsolable when she hears what has happened. "Then they're sure to cancel the ball."

"I don't think so," I say.

"Yes, they will. When there is an unburied body. What luck!"

Georg gets up. "Come along," he says to me. "It's no good. We'll have to go and talk to Döbbeling again."

The village is suddenly quiet. The sun shines down at an angle from behind the war memorial. Kurt Bach's marble lion is aglow. Döbbeling has now become entirely an official personage.

"You're not going to start talking about money again in the presence of death?" he remarks at once.

"Yes I am," Georg says. "That's our profession. We are always in the presence of death."

"You must be patient. I have no time now. You know what has just happened."

"Yes, we know. And since we saw you we have found out the rest. You can put us down as witnesses, Herr Döbbeling. We're going to stay here until we get our money and so We'll be glad to report to the Homicide Department tomorrow morning."

"Witnesses? What kind of witnesses? You weren't even there."

"Witnesses. Just let us attend to that. After all, you must want to find out everything connected with the killing of Beste, the carpenter. The killing and the incitement thereto."

Döbbeling stares at Georg for a while. Then he says slowly: "Are you trying to blackmail me?"

Georg gets up. "Will you be so kind as to tell me exactly what you mean by that?"

Döbbeling makes no reply. He continues to stare at Georg.

Georg returns his glance. Then Döbbeling goes to the safe, opens it, and lays several packages of notes on the table. "Count them and give me a receipt."

The money lies on the red-checked tablecloth amid the empty schnaps glasses and the coffee cups. Georg counts it and writes a receipt. I glance through the window. The yellow and green fields are still shimmering; but they are no longer the harmony of existence; they are less and more.

Döbbeling takes Georg's receipt. "I hope you understand that you will not be putting up any more tombstones in our cemetery," he says.

Georg shakes his head. "That's where you're mistaken. As a matter of fact we're going to put one up very soon. For the carpenter Beste. Gratis. And that has nothing to do with politics. If you should decide to add Beste's name to the war memorial, we're perfectly willing to do it for nothing."

"I hardly think it will come to that."

"I imagine not."

We walk to the station. "So the fellow had the money right there," I say.

"Of course. I knew he had it. He's had it for eight weeks and he's been speculating with it. Made a handsome profit and was going to make a few hundred thousand more. We wouldn't have got it next week either."

At the station Heinrich Kroll and Kurt Bach are waiting for us. "Did you get the money?" Heinrich asks.

"Yes."

"That's what I expected. They're very respectable people here. Reliable."

"Yes. Reliable."

"The ball has been canceled," says Kurt Bach, the nature boy.

Heinrich straightens his tie. "That carpenter brought it on himself. It was a nasty provocation."

"What? Putting up the official flag of our country?"

"It was a provocation. He knew how the others feel. He ought to have realized there'd be a row. It's only logical."

"Yes, Heinrich, it's logical," Georg says. "And now do me the favor of shutting your logical trap."

Heinrich Kroll gets up, offended. He is about to say something but changes his mind when he sees Georg's face. He methodically brushes the dust from his dark jacket with his hand. Then he spies Wolkenstein, who is also waiting for the train. The retired major is sitting on a remote bench and looks as if he wished he were already in Werdenbrück. Heshows no sign of joy when Heinrich goes up to him. Nevertheless, Heinrich sits down beside him.

"What will come of this?" I ask Georg.

"Nothing. None of the culprits will be found."

"And Wolkenstein?"

"Nothing will happen to him either. The carpenter is the only one who would be punished if he were still alive. Not the others. Political murder, when it strikes from the right, is honorable and surrounded by mitigating circumstances. We have a republic, but we have taken over the judges, officials, and officers from the old days. So what do you expect?"

We stare at the sunset. The train goes puffing toward it, black and lost, like a funeral coach. It's strange, I think, all of us have seen so many dead in the war and we know that over two million of us fell uselessly—why, then, are we so excited about a single man, when we have practically forgotten the two million already? But probably the reason is that one dead man is death—and two million are only a statistic.

"A mausoleum!" Frau Niebuhr says. "A mausoleum or nothing!" 

"All right," I reply. "Let it be a mausoleum." 

In the short time since Niebuhr's death the timid little woman has changed remarkably. Now she is caustic, talkative, and quarrelsome and has really become pretty much of a pest. I have been dickering with her for two weeks about a memorial for the baker, and each day I think less harshly of the departed. Many people are brave and kind as long as things go badly with them and become intolerable when things improve, especially in our beloved fatherland; the most timid and obsequious recruits here often become the worst-tempered noncoms.

"You haven't any on display," Frau Niebuhr says pointedly.

"Mausoleums," I explain, "are not put on display. They are made to order like the ball dresses of queens. We have a few drawings of them here and perhaps we'll have to make one especially for you."

"Of course! It must be something quite special. Otherwise I shall go to Hollmann and Klotz."

"I hope you have been there already. We like our clients to visit the competition. In mausoleums quality is the thing of paramount importance." 

I know that she has been there long since. The traveler for Hollmann and Klotz, Weeping Oskar, has told me about it. We ran into him a short time ago and tried to bribe him away. He is still undecided, but we have offered him a higher percentage than Hollmann and Klotz pay, and to show us that he is well disposed during this period of reflection he is temporarily working for us as a spy. "Show me your drawings!" Frau Niebuhr commands like a duchess.

We have none, but I get out a few renderings of war memorials. They are effective, forty-five inches high, drawn with charcoal and colored chalk and embellished with appropriate backgrounds.

"A lion," Frau Niebuhr says. "He was a lion! But a leaping lion, not a dying one. It must be a leaping lion."

"How would a leaping horse do?" I ask. "A few years ago our sculptor won the Berlin-Teplitz challenge trophy with that subject"

She shakes her head. "An eagle," she says thoughtfully.

"A true mausoleum should be a kind of chapel," I explain. "Stained glass like a church, a marble sarcophagus with bronze laurel wreaths, a marble bench for your repose and silent prayer, around the outside flowers, cypresses, gravel paths, perhaps a bird bath for our feathered songsters, an enclosure for the plot of short granite columns with bronze chains, a massive iron door with the monogram, the family coat of arms, or the hallmark of the Bakers' Guild—"