The Black Obelisk (32 page)

Wernicke blows smoke at me. "He makes you angry—you don't disturb him."

"That's it!" I say. "That's what enrages me so!"

"He knows it. That's what makes him so confident."

I pour out the rest of the wine. My share has been a bare glass and a half—the rest was consumed by God's warrior —a Foster Jesuitengarten 1915, a wine which should only be drunk in the evening in the company of a woman. "And you?" I ask.

"None of this touches me at all," Wernicke says. "I'm a sort of traffic policeman of the soul. I try to keep order at this particular intersection—but I am not responsible for the traffic."

"I continually feel myself responsible for everything in the world. Does that mean I'm a psychopath too?"

Wernicke bursts into insulting laughter. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? But it's not so simple! You're completely uninteresting—a wholly normal run-of-the-mill adolescent!"

I come to Grossestrasse. A protest parade is slowly pushing its way toward me from the market place. Like sea gulls fluttering before a dark cloud, the brightly clad Sunday picnickers, with their children, lunch baskets, bicycles, and colorful knickknacks, scatter before it—then it is here and blocks the street.

It is a procession of war maimed, protesting against their inadequate pensions. First, on a little gocart, comes the stump of a body with a head. Arms and legs are missing. It's no longer possible to see whether the stump was once a tall man or a short man. That cannot be estimated even from the shoulders, because the arms were amputated so high up there was no place for prostheses. The man has a round head, lively brown eyes, and a mustache. Someone must look after him every day—he is shaven, his hair and mustache have been trimmed. The little cart, which is really only a board on rollers, is being pulled by a one-armed man. The amputee sits on it very straight and attentive. After him come the wheel chairs with the legless, three abreast. The chairs have rubber-tired wheels big enough to be moved by hand. The leather aprons that cover the space where legs should be, and are usually closed, are open today. The stumps can be seen. The trousers have been carefully folded over them.

Next come the amputees on crutches. These are the strangely distorted silhouettes one sees so often—the straight crutches, with the twisted bodies hanging between them. Then follow the blind and the one-eyed. You can hear the white canes tapping the pavement and see the yellow bands with three circles on their arms. The sightless are identified by the three black circles that mark one-way streets and blind alleys—and mean "Keep Out." Many of the wounded carry placards with legends. Some of the blind do too, even though they cannot read them. "Is This the Gratitude of Our Fatherland?" one of them asks. "We Are Starving," says another.

The man on the little wagon has a stick with a sign on it thrust into his jacket. The inscription reads: "My Month's Pension Is Worth One Gold Mark." Between two other carts flutters a white banner: "Our Children Have No Milk, No Meat, No Butter. Is This What We Fought For?"

These are the saddest victims of the inflation. Their pensions are so worthless practically nothing can be done with them. From time to time the government grants them an increase—much too late, for on the day the increase is granted, it is already far too low. The dollar has gone wild; it no longer leaps by thousands and ten thousands, but by hundreds of thousands daily. Day before yesterday it stood at 1,200,000, yesterday at 1,400,000. Tomorrow it is expected to reach two million—and by the end of the month ten. Workmen are given their pay twice a day now—in the morning and in the afternoon, with a recess of a half-hour each time so that they can rush out and buy things—for if they waited a few hours the value of their money would drop so far that their children would not get half enough food to feel satisfied. Satisfied—not nourished. Satisfied with anything that can be stuffed into their stomachs, not with what the body needs.

The procession is much slower than any other demonstration. Behind it the cars of the Sunday excursionists are piling up. It is a strange contrast—the gray, almost anonymous mass of the silent victims of war, dragging themselves along—and behind them the congested cars of the war profiteers, muttering and fuming with impatience on the heels of the war widows who, with their children, thin, hungry, woebegone, and careworn make up the end of the procession. In the cars are all the colors of summer in linen and silk—full cheeks, round arms, and round faces, the latter showing some embarrassment at being caught in so disagreeable a situation. The pedestrians on the sidewalks are better off; they simply look away, pulling their children, who would like to stay and ask questions about the maimed men. Everyone who can disappears into the side streets.

The sun is high and hot, and the wounded are beginning to sweat. It is the unhealthy, greasy sweat of the anemic that pours down their faces. Suddenly behind them there is the blast of a horn; someone has not been able to wait; he thinks he can gain a few minutes by driving past them, half on the sidewalk. All the wounded turn around. No one says a word, but they spread out and block the street. The car will have to run over them in order to pass. In it is a young man in a bright suit and straw hat, accompanied by a girl. He makes a few silly, embarrassed gestures and lights a cigarette. Each of the wounded men, as they go by, looks at him. Not in reproof—they are looking at the cigarette whose fragrant smoke drift across the street. It is a very good cigarette; none of the wounded can afford to smoke at all. And so they sniff up as much as they possibly can while they pass.

I follow the procession to St. Mary's. There stand two National Socialists in uniform, with a big sign; "Come to Us, Comrades! Adolf Hitler Will Help You!" The procession moves around the church. Right and left the cars can now shoot by.

We are sitting in the Red Mill. A bottle of champagne stands in front of us. Its price is two million marks, more than the monthly pension of a legless man and his family. Reisenfeld has ordered it.

He is sitting where he can watch the whole dance floor. "I knew about her all along," he remarks to me. "I just wanted to watch you try to trick me. Aristocratic ladies do not live across the street from small tombstone firms, and they do not live in houses like that!"

"That's an astoundingly false conclusion for a man of the world like you," I reply. "You should know that almost all aristocrats live exactly that way nowadays. The inflation has seen to it. The days of palaces are over, Herr Riesenfeld. And if anyone still has one, he is taking in boarders. Inherited money has disappeared. Imperial highnesses live in furnished rooms, saber-rattling colonels have become embittered insurance agents, countesses—"

"Enough!" Riesenfeld interrupts me. "You're going to make me cry! Further explanations are unnecessary. But I knew about Frau Watzek from the beginning. It simply amused me to see your silly attempts to deceive me."

He looks over at Lisa, who is dancing a fox trot with Georg. I forbear to remind the Odenwald Casanova that he classified Lisa as a Frenchwoman with the sinuous walk of a panther —it would result in the immediate breaking-off of our relationship, and we urgently need a shipment of granite.

"However, that doesn't detract from the total effect in the slightest," Riesenfeld explains conciliatingly. "On the contrary, it heightens one's interest! These thoroughbreds produced by the common people! Just look at the way she dances! Like a—a—"

"A sinuous panther," I help him out

Riesenfeld glances at me. "Sometimes you show some understanding of women," he growls.

"Learned from you!"
 

He drinks to me, unsuspiciously flattered.

"There's one thing I'd like to know about you," I say. "I have a feeling that at home in Odenwald you're a respectable citizen and family man—you have already shown me the photographs of your three children and your rose-covered house, in whose walls you used, out of principle, no granite at all, a fact which I as an unsuccessful poet hold greatly to your credit—why, when you are away, do you turn into such a night-club wolf?"

"In order to get greater pleasure at home out of being a citizen and family man," Riesenfeld replies promptly.

"That's a good reason. But why take the long way around?"

Riesenfeld grins. "It's my demon. The double nature of man. Never heard of it, eh?"

"Haven't I though? I am the living prototype."

Riesenfeld laughs insultingly, just like Wernicke this morning. "You?"

"The same sort of thing exists on a somewhat more intellectual level," I explain.

Riesenfeld takes a swallow and sighs. "Reality and imagination! Eternal youth and eternal discord! Or—" recovering himself he adds, ironically— "in your case, as a poet, natural yearning and fulfillment, God and the flesh, cosmos and locus—"

Fortunately the trumpets begin again. Georg comes back to the table with Lisa. She is a vision in apricot-colored crepe de Chine^ After Riesenfeld found out about her plebeian background, he demanded from us as restitution that we all be his guests at the Red Mill. Now he bows in front of Lisa. "A tango,
gnädige Frau
.
Would you—" Lisa is a head taller than Riesenfeld and we expect an interesting performance. But to our amazement the Granite King proves himself a magnificent master of the tango. He is not only an adept in the Argentinian, but also in the Brazilian and apparently several other varieties. Like an expert skater he pirouettes around the dance floor with the disconcerted Lisa. "How are you feeling?" I ask Georg. "Don't take it too hard. Mammon versus love! A short while ago I got several lessons in that subject myself. Even from you, piquantly enough. How did Lisa escape from your room this morning?"

"It was difficult. Riesenfeld wanted to take over the office as an observation post. He planned to keep his eye on her window. I thought I could scare him off by revealing to hira who Lisa is. That did no good. He bore it like a man. Finally I succeeded in dragging him into the kitchen for a few minutes for coffee. That was the moment for Lisa. When Riesenfeld went back to spying from the office, she was smiling graciously at him out of her own window."

"In the kimono with the storks?"

"In one with windmills."

I look at him. He nods. "Traded for a small headstone. It was necessary. Anyway Riesenfeld, bowing and scraping, shouted an invitation for this evening."

"He wouldn't have dared to when she was still called 'de la Tour.'"

"He did it respectfully. Lisa accepted because she thought it would help us in our business."

"And you believe that?"

"Yes," Georg replies happily.

Riesenfeld and Lisa come back from the dance floor. Riesenfeld is sweating. Lisa is as cool as an Easter lily. To my immense astonishment I suddenly see another figure appear among the toy balloons behind the bar. It is Otto Bambuss. He stands there, lost in confusion and about as incongruous as Bodendiek would be. Then Willy's red head bobs up beside him, and from somewhere I *hear Renée de la Tour's commanding tones: "Bodmer, at ease!"

I come to. "Otto," I say to Bambuss, "what brought you here?"

"I did," Willy answers. "I wanted to do something for German literature. Otto must soon return to his village. There he will have time to grind out poems about the sinfulness of the world. At the moment, however, it is his duty to observe."

Otto smiles gently. His shortsighted eyes blink. Perspiration stands on his forehead. Willy sits down with him and Renée at the table next to ours. Between Lisa and Renée there has been a second-long, point-blank duel of eyes. Both turn back to their tables, unbeaten, confident, and smiling.

Otto leans over to me. "I have completed the 'Tigress' cycle," he whispers. "Finished it last night. I'm already at work on a new series: The Scarlet Woman.' Or perhaps I'll call it "The Great Beast of the Apocalypse' and write it in free verse. It's magnificent. The spirit has descended on me!"

"Good! But what do you expect to find here?"

"Everything," Otto replies, beaming with happiness. "I always expect everything in a place where I've never been before. I hear you really do know a circus lady!"

"The ladies I know are not for beginners to practice on," I say. "You don't seem to know anything at all, you feebleminded camel, otherwise you wouldn't behave like such a thickhead! So, pay attention to rule number one: hands off other people's women—you haven't the right physique for it."

Otto coughs. "Aha," he says then. "Bourgeois prejudice! I wasn't talking about wives."

"Neither was I, you simpleton. With wives the rules are not so strict. But why are you so sure that I know a circus lady? I have already told you she was a ticket seller in a flea circus."

"Willy told me that wasn't true. She is a circus acrobat."

"So that's it. Willy!" I see his red head bobbing above the dancers like a buoy on the ocean. "Listen to me, Otto," I say. "It's entirely the other way around. Willy's girl is from the circus. The one with the blue hat. And she loves literature. So now's your chance! Go to it!"