The Black Obelisk (22 page)

He reaches for the bottle of schnaps. "Hold on!" I say. "There's still wine. I'll heat it up at once on the alcohol stove. No schnaps now! You're feverish! Hot red wine with spices from the Indies and the Sunda Islands!"

"Fine! Heat it. But why aren't we ourselves on the Islands of Hope, sleeping with women who smell of cinnamon and whose eyes turn white when we mate with them under the Southern Cross and cry out like parrots and like tigers? Answer me!"

The flame of the alcohol stove burns like the blue light of adventure in the semidarkness of the office. The rain roars like the sea. "We are on our way, Captain," I say, taking a hefty swig of the whisky to catch up with Georg. "The caravel is just passing Santa Cruz, Lisbon, and the Gold Coast. The slaves of the Arabian Mohammed Ben Hassan Ben Watzek are staring out of their cabins and waving to us. Here is your hookah!"

I hand Georg a cigar out of the box kept for our best agents. He lights it and blows a couple of perfect smoke rings. His pajamas show dark wet spots. "On our way," he says. "Why aren't we there yet?"

"We are there. One is there always and everywhere. Time is a prejudice. That is the secret of life. People just don't know it. They keep trying to arrive someplace!"

"Why don't they know it?" Georg asks in commanding tones.

"Time, space and casuality are the veils of Maia which prevent open vision."

"Why?"

"They are the whips God uses to keep us from becoming His equals. He drives us through a panorama of illusions and through the tragedy of duality."

"What duality?"

"The I and the world. The duality of being and living. Object and subject are no longer one. Birth and death are the consequences. The chain rattles. Whoever breaks free of it also breaks free of birth and death. Let us try it, Rabbi Kroll!"

The wine steams, smelling of lemon and spice. I add sugar, and we drink. Applause comes from the cabin of the slave ship of Mohammed Ben Hassan Ben Jussuf Ben Watzek on the other side of the gulf. We bow and put down our glasses. "And so we are immortal?" Georg asks with sudden impatience.

"Only hypothetically," I reply. "In theory—for immortal is the opposite of mortal, and therefore, unfortunately, already again half of a duality. Only when the veil of Maia has been entirely torn away does duality completely go by the board. Then one is home again, no more subject and object, but both in one, and all questions die."

"That's not enough!"

"What more is there?"

"Man is. Period."

"That, too, is part of a pair: man is, man is not. Always a duality, Captain! We must transcend it!"

"How? The instant we open our mouths we have hold of part of another pair. That can't go on! Are we to go through life dumb?"

"That's the opposite of not-dumb."

"Damn it! Another trap! What to do, Helmsman?"

I am silent and lift my glass. A red reflection gleams in the wine. I point to the rain and I lift a piece of granite from among the stone samples. Then I point to Lisa, to the reflection in the glass, the most transitory thing in the world, to the granite, the most enduring in the world, put the glass and the granite aside and close my eyes. For all this hocus-pocus, something like a shudder suddenly runs along my spine. Have we perhaps unwittingly caught the scent? Have we in our cups laid hold of the magic key? Suddenly where is the room? Is it rushing through the universe? Where is the world? Is it just now passing the Pleiades? And where is the red reflection of the heart? Is it Pole Star, axis, and center in one?

Frenetic applause from the other side of the street. I open my eyes. For a moment there is no perspective. Everything is flat and far and near and round at the same time and has no name. Then it whirls back into place and stands still and is once more what it has always been called. When did this happen to me before? It did oncel I am perfectly sure of it, but I can't remember when.

Lisa waves a bottle of crème de cacao out of the window. At that moment the bell on the door rings. We hastily wave to Lisa and close the window. Before Georg can disappear, the office door opens and Liebermann, the gravedigger at the municipal cemetery, comes in. With a single glance he takes in the alcohol stove, the mulled wine, and Georg's pajamas. "Birthday?" he croaks.

"Grippe," Georg replies.

"Congratulations!"

"Why congratulations?"

"Grippe brings business. I've noticed it out there. Considerable increase in deaths."

"Herr Liebermann," I say to the hearty octogenarian. "We're not talking about business. Herr Kroll has a serious, cosmic attack of grippe, against which we are taking measures. Will you have a glass of the medicine?"

"I'm a schnaps drinker. Wine justs sobers me."

"We have schnaps too."

I pour him a tumblerful. He takes a good swallow, opens his knapsack and gets out four trout wrapped in big, green leaves. They smell of the river and rain and fish. "A gift," Liebermann says.

The trout lie on the table, their eyes dull. Their gray-green skin is covered with red flecks. We stare at them. Softly and suddenly death has stolen into the room again where a moment ago immortality held sway—softly and silently, with the creatures' reproach toward that murderer and omnivore, man, who talks of peace and love, cuts the throats of lambs and let fish gasp out their lives in order to have strength to go on talking about peace and love—not excepting Boden-diek, the man of God and fancier of red meat.

"A fine supper," Liebermann says. "Especially for you, Herr Kroll. A light diet for the sick."

I carry the dead fish into the kitchen and give them to Frau Kroll, who appraises them with the eye of an expert. "With fresh butter, boiled potatoes, and salad," she announces.

I glance around. The kitchen is gleaming, pots and pans reflect the light, a kettle is hissing, and there is a good smell. Kitchens are always a comfort. The reproach disappears from the eyes of the trout. Instead of dead creatures they have suddenly become food, which can be prepared in various ways. It almost seems as though they had been hatched for that purpose. What traitors we are, I think, to our nobler feelings!

Liebermann has brought us a few addresses. The grippe is indeed taking its toll. People are dying because they have little resistance left. They were weakened to begin with by the food shortage during the war. I decide suddenly to look for another profession. I am tired of death. Georg has fetched his dressing gown. He sits there like a sweating Buddha. The dressing gown is of a poisonous green. At home Georg loves loud colors. Suddenly I know what it was that our former conversation reminded me of. It was something Isabelle said a while ago. I do not remember it exactly, but it had to do with the deceptiveness of thighs. But in our case was it really deception? Or were we for an instant one centimeter closer to God?

The Poets' Den in the Hotel Walhalla is a small paneled room. A bust of Goethe stands on a bookshelf, and photographs and etchings of German classical and romantic writers, together with a few moderns, hang on the walls. This spot is the meeting place of the Poets' Club and of the intellectual elite of the city. There is a gathering every week. Even the editor of the daily paper appears occasionally and is openly flattered and secretly hated depending on whether he has accepted or rejected some contribution. He pays no attention. Like a kindly uncle he drifts through the tobacco smoke, slandered, attacked, and venerated; on only one point is everyone in agreement about him: that he knows nothing about modern literature. According to him, after Theodor Storm, Eduard Morike, and Gottfried Keller the great wasteland begins.

A couple of provincial judges and pensioned officials, interested in literature, attend too; so do Arthur Bauer and some of his colleagues; the poets of the city come, of course, a few painters and musicians, and occasionally a guest from outside. At the moment, Arthur Bauer is being courted by that lickspittle Mathias Grand, who hopes that Arthur will print his seven-part "Book of Death." Eduard Knobloch, founder of the club, appears. He throws a quick look around the room and brightens. Some of his critics and enemies are not there. To my amazement he sits down beside me. I had not expected that after the episode with the chicken. "How goes it?" he asked quite humanly and not in his dining-room voice.

"Brilliantly," I say because I know that will irritate him.

"I am planning a new sonnet sequence," he announces without further explanation. "I hope you have no objection."

"Why should I? I hope they rhyme."

I have the edge on Eduard because I have had two sonnets printed in the paper whereas he has only had two didactic poems. "It's a cycle," he says, to my astonishment slightly embarrassed. "The thing is this: I'd like to call it 'Gerda.'"

"Call it whatever—" I interrupt myself. "Gerda, did you say? Why Gerda? Gerda Schneider?"

"Nonsense! Simply Gerda."

I regard the fat giant suspiciously. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Eduard gives a false laugh. "Nothing. Only poetic license. The sonnets have something to do with the circus. Distantly, of course. As you know, it's stimulating to the imagination if you can find—even theoretically—a concrete point of departure."

"Stop talking nonsense," I say. "What does this mean, you cheat?"

"Cheat?" Eduard replies with feigned indignation. "It would be fairer to call you that! Didn't you act as though the lady were a singer like Willy's disgusting friend?"

"Never. You just thought so."

"Anyway," Eduard announces, "the thing tormented me. I investigated and found out that you had lied. She's not a singer at all."

"Did I ever say she was?" Didn't I tell you she was with the circus?"

"You did. But you used the truth to make me disbelieve you. And then you imitated the other lady."

"How did you find out all this?"

"I met Mademoiselle Schneider accidentally on the street and asked her. One's allowed to do that, I presume?"

"Supposing she tricked you?"

Suddenly Eduard has a smile of disgusting self-assurance on his baby face; he makes no reply. "Listen to me," I say, alarmed and therefore very calm. "This lady is not to be won with sonnets."

Eduard does not react to this. He continues to show the superiority of a poet who in addition to his poems owns a first-class restaurant. And I have seen that in this matter Gerda is vulnerable. "You scoundrel," I exclaim in rage. "All this won't do you any good. The lady is leaving in a couple, of days."

"She is not leaving," Eduard replies, showing his teeth for the first time since I have known him. "Her contract was renewed today."

I stare at him. This clod knows more than I. "So you met her today?"

Eduard begins to stammer slightly. "Accidentally today— that was it! Just today."

The lie is written plain on his fat cheeks. "So you instantly had the inspiration for the dedication?" I say. "Is that how you repay our months of faithful patronage? With the jab of a kitchen knife in the genitals, you dishwasher?"

"You can take your damned patronage and—"

"You've sent her the sonnets already, haven't you, you impudent peacock?" I interrupt him. "Oh stop it, lies won't help you! She'll show them to me anyway, you maker of dirty beds!"

"What do you mean?"

"Your sonnets, you matricide! Didn't I teach you how to write them? Nice thanks! Couldn't you at least have had the decency to send her villanelles or odes? But no, my own weapons—well, Gerda will show me the stuff so I can translate it to her!"

"Why, that would be—" Eduard stutters, his self-confidence shaken for the first time.

"It would be nothing," I reply. "Women do such things. As I know. But since I value you as a restaurant keeper, I will reveal something more; Gerda has a giant of a brother who keeps watch over the family honor. He has already crippled two of her admirers. And he is especially fond of beating up people with flat feet. That means you."

"Nonsense," Eduard says. Nevertheless, I see he has grown thoughtful. No matter how improbable an assertion is, if it is made with enough assurance it has an effect. That's something I learned from Watzek's political idol....

The poet Hans Hungermann comes up to the sofa where we are sitting. He is the author of the unpublished volume of 
poetry "Wotan's Death" and the dramas "Saul," "Baldur," and "Mohammed." "How fairs art, my friends?" he asks. "Have you read the ordure that Otto Bambuss printed yesterday in the
Tecklendorfer Kreisblatt
?
Buttermilk and phlegm! To think that Bauer publishes that slimy bastard!"