The Black Obelisk (2 page)

Heinrich takes his hat off and wipes his forehead. Outside it is fairly cool and he is not perspiring; he does this simply to show us what a hard worker he is in comparison with us office loafers.

"I have sold the memorial cross," he says with a modesty as unobtrusive as the roar of a lion.

"Which? The small marble one?" I ask hopefully.

"The big one," Heinrich replies, even more simply, and stares at me.

"What? The Swedish granite with double socle and bronze chains?"

"That's the one! Did you think we had any other?"

Heinrich clearly relishes his silly question as a triumph of sarcasm.

"No," I say. "We haven't any other. That's the trouble. It was the last. Our rock of Gibraltar."

"How much did you sell it for?" Georg Kroll now asks.

Heinrich straightens up. "For three-quarters of a million, without inscription and exclusive of freight and packing. They are additional."

"Good God!" Georg and I say at the same time.

Heinrich favors us with a glance full of arrogance; dead haddock sometimes wear a similar expression. "It was a hard battle," he proclaims and for some reason puts on his hat again.

"I wish you had lost it," I reply.

"What?"

"Lost it. Lost the battle."

"What?" Heinrich repeats in annoyance. I irritate him easily.

"He wishes you had not sold it," Georg Kroll says.

"What? What in the world does that mean? Hell and damnation, I slave from morning till night and when I make a brilliant sale all I get in this hole is reproaches! Go out to the villages yourselves and try—"

"Heinrich," Georg interrupts him mildly, "we know you work yourself to the bone. But today we're living in a time when every sale makes us poorer. For years there has been an inflation. Since the war, Heinrich. But this year the inflation has turned into galloping consumption. That's why figures no longer mean—"

"I know that myself. I'm no idiot."

No one says anything to that. Only idiots make such statements. And to contradict them is useless. That is something I have learned on the Sundays I spend at the insane asylum. Heinrich gets out a notebook. "The memorial cost us fifty thousand when we bought it. You would think that three-quarters of a million would mean a neat little profit."

He is dabbling in sarcasm again. He thinks he must use it on me because I was once a schoolteacher. That was shortly after the war, in an isolated village on the heath—nine long months until I made my escape, with winter loneliness howling like a dog at my heels.

"It would have been an even bigger profit if in place of the magnificent cross you had sold that damned obelisk out there," I say. "Your late father bought it for even less sixty years ago when the business was founded—for something like fifty marks, according to tradition."

"The obelisk? What's the obelisk got to do with this? The obelisk is unsalable, any child knows that."

"For that very reason," I say, "no tears would be shed if you had got rid of it. But it's a pity about the cross. We'll have to replace it at great expense."

Heinrich Kroll snorts. He had polyps in his thick nose and gets stuffed up easily. "Are you by any chance trying to tell me that it would cost three-quarters of a million to buy a memorial cross today?"

"That's something we'll find out soon enough," Georg Kroll says. "Riesenfeld will be here tomorrow. We'll have to place a new order with the Odenwald Granite Works; there's not much left on inventory."

"We still have the obelisk," I suggest maliciously.

"Why don't you sell that yourself?" Heinrich snaps. "So Riesenfeld is coming tomorrow; well, I'll stay and have a talk with him myself. Then we'll see where prices stand."

Georg and I exchange glances. We know that we will keep Heinrich away from Riesenfeld even if we have to make him drunk or pour castor oil in his morning beer. That honest, old-fashioned businessman would bore Riesenfeld to death with his war experiences and stories of the good old times when a mark was still a mark and honesty was the mark of honor, as our beloved field marshal has so aptly put it. Heinrich dotes on such platitudes; not Riesenfeld. For Riesenfeld, honesty is what you demand from someone else when it's to his disadvantage, and from yourself when you can gain by it.

"Prices change daily," Georg says. "There's nothing to talk about."

"Really? Perhaps you, too, think I got a bad price?"

"That depends. Did you bring the money with you?"

Heinrich stares at Georg. "Bring it with me? What in blazes are you talking about? How could I bring the money when we haven't even made delivery? You know that's impossible!"

"It isn't impossible at all." I reply. "On the contrary, it's common practice today. It's called payment in advance."

"Payment in advance!" Heinrich's fat snout twitches contemptuously. "What does a schoolteacher like you know about it? In our business how can you demand payment in advance? From the sorrowing relatives when the wreathes on the grave haven't even begun to wilt! Are you going to demand money at such a moment for something that hasn't been delivered?"

"Of course! When else? That's when they're weak and it's easy to get money out of them."

"They're weak then? Don't make me laugh! That's when they're harder than steel! After all the expense for the coffin, the pastor, the grave, the flowers, the wake—why, you couldn't get so much as a ten-thousand advance, young man! First, people have to recover! Before they pay they have to see what they have ordered standing in the cemetery and not just on paper in the catalogue, even when it's been drawn by you with Chinese brushes and genuine gold leaf for the inscriptions and a few grieving relatives into the bargain."

Another example of Heinrich's personal tactlessness! I pay no attention. It is true that I not only drew the tombstones for our catalogue and reproduced them on the Presto mimeograph machine but also painted them to increase their effectiveness and provided them with atmosphere: with weeping willows, beds of pansies, cypresses, and widows in mourning veils watering the flowers. Our competitors almost died of envy when we produced this novelty; they had nothing but simple stock photographs, and Heinrich, too, thought the idea magnificent at the time, especially the use of gold leaf. As a matter of fact, to make the effect completely natural I had embellished the drawings of the tombstones with inscriptions emblazoned with gold leaf dissolved in varnish. I had had a splendid time doing it; I killed off everyone I hated and painted tombstones for them—for example, the beast who was my sergeant when I was a recruit and who is still living happily: "Here after prolonged and hideous sufferings, having seen all his loved ones precede him in death, lies Constable Karl Flümer." This was fully justified; Flümer had treated me outrageously and had sent me twice on patrols from which I had returned alive only by chance. I had ample reason to wish him the worst.

"Herr Kroll," I say, "allow us to give you another short analysis of the times. The principles by which you were raised are noble, but today they lead to bankruptcy. Anybody can earn money now; almost no one knows how to maintain its purchasing power. The important thing is not to sell but to buy and to be paid as quickly as possible. We live in an age of commodities. Money is an illusion; everyone knows that, but many still do not believe it. As long as this is so the inflation will go on till absolute zero is reached. Man lives seventy-five per cent by his imagination and only twenty-five per cent by fact—that is his strength and his weakness, and that is why in this witch's dance of numbers there are still winners and losers. We know that we cannot be absolute winners; but at the same time we don't want to be complete losers. If the three-quarters of a million marks you settled for today is not paid for two months, it will be worth what fifty thousand is worth now. Therefore—"

Heinrich's face has turned dark red. Now he interrupts me. "I am no idiot," he declares for the second time. "And you don't need to read me lectures. I know more of practical life than you do. And I would rather go down honorably than exist by disreputable profiteering methods. As long as I am sales manager of this firm the business will be conducted in the old, decent fashion—and that's all there is to it. I rely on my experience, and it has stood us in good stead so far; that's how it will continue in the future! It's a rotten trick to spoil a man's pleasure in a fine business deal! Why didn't you stick to your job as arse-drummer?"

He snatches up his hat and slams the door behind him. We see him vigorously stamping off, knock-kneed and bow-legged, a half-military figure with his bicycle clips. He is in formal retreat to his accustomed table at Blume's Restaurant

"That bourgeois sadist wants to get fun out of his work," I say angrily. "Imagine that! How can we carry on our business except with pious cynicism if we want to save our souls? That hypocrite wants to get pleasure out of haggling over corpses and actually considers it his hereditary right!"

Georg laughs. "Take your money and let's be on our way.

Weren't you going to buy a necktie? Get on with it! There'll be no more raises today!"

He picks up the suitcase with the money and casually puts it in the room next to the office, where he sleeps. I stow my packages of bills in a cardboard box with the inscription: Konditorei Keller, Finest Pastries, Home Deliveries.

"Is Riesenfeld really coming?" I ask.

"Yes. He telegraphed."

"What does he want? Money? Or has he something to sell?"

"We'll find out," Georg says and locks the office door.

We step outside. The strong sun of late April pours down as though a gigantic golden basin full • of light and wind were being emptied on us. We stop. The garden is aflame with green, spring rustles in the young foliage of the poplar tree as in a harp, and the first lilac is in bloom.

"Inflation," I say. "There you have one too—the wildest of all. It looks as if even nature knows that now you can only reckon in ten thousands and in millions. Look what the tulips are up to! And that white over there and the red and yellow everywhere! And what fragrance!"

Georg nods, sniffs, and takes a puff of his Brazilian; for him nature is doubly beautiful when he can smoke a cigar at the same time.

We feel the sun on our faces and we look at all the splendor. The garden behind the house is also the showroom for our monuments. There they are drawn up like a company behind Otto, the obelisk, who stands like a thin lieutenant at his post beside the door. It is Otto that I urged Heinrich to sell, Otto, the oldest tombstone of the firm, our trademark and a prodigy of tastelessness. Directly behind him come the cheap little headstones of sandstone and poured concrete with narrow pointed socles, for the poor, who live and slave in honesty and naturally get nowhere. Then come the larger but still inexpensive ones, with two socles, for those who are always trying to improve themselves, at least in death, since in life it was not possible. We sell more of these than of the perfectly plain ones, and one doesn't know whether to find this belated ambition on the part of the survivors touching or absurd. Next come the monuments of sandstone with inset plaques of marble, gray syenite, or black Swedish granite. These are already too expensive for the man who lives by the work of his hands. Small businessmen, foremen, artisans who own their own businesses are the clients—and of course that eternal bird of ill omen, the petty official who must always pretend to be more than he is, the honest white-collar proletarian of whom it is impossible to say how he manages to exist at all today since his raises always come far too late.

All these tombstones are still in the class of trifles—it is only behind them that you come to the blocks of marble and granite. First, those polished on one side, with front surfaces smooth but sides and backs roughhewn and socles rough all around. That is the sort for the more prosperous middle classes, the employer, the businessman, the larger store owner, and of course that diligent bird of ill omen, the higher official, who just like his lesser brother, must pay out more in death than he earned in life in order to preserve appearances.

But the aristocrats among the tombstones are those of marble and of black Swedish granite polished on all sides. Here there are no more rough surfaces and unfinished backs; everything has been brought to a high polish no matter whether one sees it or not, even the socles, of which there are not just one or two but often a third put in at an angle; and, if it is a showpiece in the real sense of the word, there is a stately cross of the same material on top. Today, of course, these are only for rich farmers, property owners, profiteers, and clever business people who deal in long-term promissory notes and so live on the Reichsbank, which keeps paying for everything with constantly replenished and unsupported paper currency.

Simultaneously we glance at the only one of these showpieces that, up to a quarter of an hour ago, still belonged to the firm. There it stands, black and glistening like the lacquer on a new car, the perfume of spring drifts around it, lilacs bend toward it; it is a great lady, cool, untouched, and, for one hour more, still virginal—then it will have the name of Otto Fleddersen, landowner, chiseled on its narrow waist in gilded Latin characters at eight hundred marks per letter. "Farewell, black Diana," I say. "Farewell!" and I raise my hat to it. "To the poet it's an eternal riddle that even perfect beauty is subject to the laws of fate and must perish miserably! Farewell! You will now become a shameless advertisement for the soul of the swindler Fleddersen, who cheated the poor widows of the city out of their last ten-thousand-mark bills for overpriced butter adulterated with margarine—not to mention his extortionate prices for calves' liver, pork cutlets, and roast beef! Farewell!"

"You're making me hungry," Georg remarks. "Off to the Walhalla! Or do you want to buy your tie first?"

"No. I have time before the stores close. There's no new dollar quotation Saturday afternoons. From noon today till Monday morning our currency is stable. Why? It sounds fishy to me. Why doesn't the mark fall over the week end? Does God hold it up?"

"Because the stock exchanges are shut. Any more questions?"

"Yes. Does man live from inside out or from outside in?"

"Man lives, period. There's goulash at the Walhalla, goulash with potatoes, pickles, and salad. I saw the menu as I was coming back from the bank."

"Goulash!" I pick a primrose and put it in my buttonhole. "Man lives, you're right! Whoever seeks further is already lost. Come along, let's annoy Eduard Knobloch."

We enter the big dining room of the Hotel Walhalla. At sight of us Eduard Knobloch, the owner, a fat giant with a brown toupee and a floating dinner coat, makes a face as though he had chewed on a bullet in his venison.

"Good morning, Herr Knobloch," Georg says. "Fine weather today. Gives one a great appetite!"

Eduard jerks his shoulders nervously. "Eating too much is unhealthy! It damages the liver, the gall bladder, everything."

"Not at your place, Herr Knobloch," Georg answers genially. "Your noonday meal is wholesome."

"Wholesome, yes. But too much of what is wholesome can be harmful too. According to the latest scientific investigations, too much meat—"

I interrupt Eduard by giving him a gentle slap on his soft belly. He leaps back as though someone had touched his privates. "Leave us alone and resign yourself to your fate," I say. "We won't eat you out of house and home. How's the poetry?"

"Gone begging. No time! In these times!"

I do not laugh at this idiotic word play. Eduard is not only an innkeeper, he is a poet too—but he'll have to do better than that. "Where's a table?" I ask.

Knobloch looks around. His face suddenly brightens. "I'm extremely sorry, gentlemen, but I've just noticed there's not a table free."

"That doesn't matter. We'll wait."

Eduard glances around again. "It looks as if none will be free for quite some time," he announces beaming. "The customers all seem to be just beginning their soup. Perhaps if you would care to try the Altstädter Hof or the Railroad Hotel. They say you can eat quite passably there."

Passably! The day seems to be dripping with sarcasm. First Heinrich and now Eduard. But we will fight for the goulash even if it takes an hour—it's the best dish on the Walhalla's menu.

But Eduard seems to be not only a poet but a mind reader as well. "No point in waiting," he says. "We never have enough goulash, we always run out of it early. Or would you like to try a German beefsteak? You can have it here at the counter."

"I'd rather be dead," I say. "We'll get goulash even if we have to cut you up."

"Really?" Eduard is all fat, skeptical triumph.

"Yes," I reply and give him a second slap on the belly. "Come, Georg, here's a table for us."

"Where?" Eduard asks quickly.

"Where that gentleman is sitting, the one who looks like a fashion plate. Yes, the redhead over there with the elegant lady. There, the one who's getting up and waving to us. My friend Willy, Eduard. Send a waiter. We want to order!"

Eduard emits a hissing sound behind us like a punctured tire. We go over to Willy.

The reason Eduard puts on this act is simple enough. Some time ago one could pay for meals at his place with coupons. One bought a book with ten tickets and thereby got the single meals somewhat cheaper. Eduard did this, at the time, to increase business. In the last weeks, however, the avalanche of the inflation has upset his calculations; if the first ticket Still bore some relation to the price of a meal, by the tenth the value had shrunk substantially. Eduard therefore decided to give up selling books of tickets. He was losing too much money. But here we had been clever. We found out about his plan in time and six weeks ago we invested the proceeds of a small war memorial in the wholesale purchase of tickets at the Walhalla. To keep Eduard from noticing what we were up to we employed a variety of people: the coffinmaker Wilke, the cemetery watchman Liebermann, our sculptor Kurt Bach, Willy, a few of our other friends and war comrades, and even Lisa. All of them bought books of tickets for us at the cashier's desk. When Eduard gave up selling coupons he expected that in ten days they would all be used up; each book contained ten tickets, and he assumed that any sensible man would buy one book at a time. But we each had over thirty books in our possession. Two weeks later Eduard became uneasy when we continued to pay with coupons; at the end of four weeks he had a slight attack of panic. At that time we were already eating for half-price; at the end of six weeks for the price of ten cigarettes. Day after day we appeared and handed over our coupons. Eduard asked how many we still had; we replied evasively. He tried to block the coupons; at the next meal we brought a lawyer with us whom we had invited to share a Wiener schnitzel. After dinner the lawyer gave Eduard a lesson in the laws governing contracts and obligations—and paid for his meal with one of our coupons. Eduard's lyricism took on a darker coloration. He proposed a compromise; we declined. He wrote a didactic poem on "Ill-gotten Gains," and sent it to the daily paper. The editor showed it to us; it was sprinkled with malicious references to "gravediggers of the nation"; there were references, too, to tombstones and "Kroll the Shyster." We invited our lawyer to share a pork cutlet with us at the Wal-halla. He instructed Eduard in the concept of public slander and its consequences—and paid once more with one of our coupons. Eduard, who was formerly a simple floral lyricist, began now to write hymns of hate. But that was all he could do; the battie rages on uninterruptedly. Eduard is in daily hope that our supply will be exhausted; he does not know that we still have tickets for over seven months.

Willy rises. He is wearing a new dark green suit of first-rate material in which he looks like a redheaded tree toad. His tie is adorned with a pearl and on the index finger of his right hand he is wearing a heavy seal ring. Five years ago he was assistant to our company cook. He is the same age as I—twenty-five.

"May I present my friends and former buddies?" Willy asks. "Georg Kroll and Ludwig Bodmer—Mademoiselle Renée de la Tour of the Moulin Rouge in Paris."

Renée de la Tour nods in a reserved but not unfriendly way. We stare at Willy. Willy stares back proudly. "Sit down, gentlemen," he says. "I assume Eduard is trying to keep you from eating here. The goulash is good, though it could stand a few more onions. Sit down, we're happy to make room for you."

We arrange ourselves at the table. Willy knows about our war with Eduard and follows it with the interest of a born gambler. "Waiter!" I shout.

A waiter who is waddling by on flat feet four paces away is suddenly stricken deaf. "Waiter!" I shout again.

"You're a barbarian," Georg Kroll says. "You're insulting the man with his profession. Why did he take part in the 1918 revolution?
Herr Ober!
"

I grin. It is true the German revolution of 1918 was the least bloody there has ever been. The revolutionaries were so terrified by themselves that they at once cried for help from the magnates and the generals of the former government to protect them from their own fit of courage. The others did it. Generously too. A bunch of revolutionaries were executed, the princes and officers received magnificent pensions so that they would have time to plan future riots, the officials received new titles—high-school teachers because academic counselors, school inspectors became educational counselors, waiters were given the right to be addressed as
"
Ober
"
or headwaiter, former secretaries of the party became excellencies, the Social Democratic minister of the army, in seventh heaven, was entitled to have real generals under him in his ministry—and the German revolution sank back into red plush,
Gemütlichkeit
,
and a yearning for uniforms and commands.

"
Herr Ober!
"
Georg repeats.

The waiter remains deaf. It is one of Eduard's childish tricks; he tries to disconcert us by telling his waiters to ignore us.

Suddenly the dining room resounds to the thunder of a first-class Prussian barrack-room roar:
"
Ober!
You there, can't you hear?" It has the instant effect of a trumpet call on an old war horse. The waiter stops as though shot in the back, and spins around; two others dash up to the table, somewhere there is the sound of heels clicking, a military-looking man at one of the nearby tables softly exclaims, "Bravo!"— and even Eduard Knobloch, with his dress coat streaming, rushes in to investigate this voice from the higher spheres. He knows that neither Georg nor I could sound so commanding.