The Black Obelisk (41 page)
"Yes," I say. "How? I don't understand that either. Neither the one nor the other."
We are standing in front of the pavilion where she lives. No one is in the hallway. A bright scarf is lying on one of the cane chairs. "Come," Isabelle says suddenly.
I hesitate for an instant, but now I cannot say no again and so I follow her upstairs. She walks into her room without looking around. I stand in the doorway. With a quick gesture she kicks off her light gold shoes and lays herself on the bed. "Come, Rudolf!" she says.
I sit down beside her. I do not want to disappoint her again, but I do not know what to do nor what I am to say if a nurse or Wernicke comes in. "Come," Isabelle says.
I lean back and she lays herself in my arms. "At last," she murmurs, "Rudolf." And after a few deep breaths she falls asleep.
The room grows dark. The window is pale in the oncoming night. I hear Isabelle's breath and now and again murmurs from the next room. Suddenly she wakes with a start. She thrusts me from her and I feel her body go rigid. She holds her breath. "It is I," I say. 'I, Rudolf."
"Who?"
"I, Rudolf. I have stayed with you."
"You have slept here?"
Her voice has changed. It is high and breathless. "I have stayed here," I say.
"Go!" she whispers. "Go at once!"
I do not know whether she recognizes me. "Where is the light?" I ask.
"No light! No light! Go! Go!"
I stand up and feel my way to the door. "Don't be afraid, Isabelle,"
I
say.
She twists about on the bed as though trying to pull the blankets over her. "Do go!" she whispers in her high, altered voice. "Otherwise she'll see you, Ralph! Quick!"
I close the door behind me and go down the stairs. The night nurse is sitting in the hall. She knows I have permission to visit Isabelle. "Is she quiet?" she asks.
I nod and walk across the garden to the gate through which the sick and the well come and go. What was that now? I think. Ralph, who can he be? She has never called me that before. And why did she think I must not be seen? I have often been in her room in the evening.
I walk down toward the city. Love, I think, and my high-flown speeches recur to me. I feel an almost unbearable longing and a faint horror and something like a desire to escape. I walk faster and faster toward the city with its lights, its warmth, its vulgarity, its misery, its commonplaceness, and its healthy revulsion against secrets and chaos, whatever names they may go by....
During the night I am awakened by voices. I open the window and see Sergeant Major Knopf being carried home. It is the first time this has happened; he has always got back under his own power even when schnaps was running out of his eyes. He is groaning loudly. Lights go on in a few windows.
"Damned drunkard!" a voice screeches from one of them. It is the widow Konersmann, who has been lying in wait there. She has nothing to do and is the neighborhood snoop. I have had reason to suspect that she is spying on Georg and Lisa too.
"Shut your trap!" an anonymous hero answers from the dark street.
I don't know whether he knows the widow Konersmann. In any case, after a few seconds of silent indignation such a deluge of abuse descends upon him, upon Knopf, upon the customs of the city, of the country, and of humanity that the Street re-echoes.
Finally the widow stops. Her last words are that Hinden-burg, the bishop, the police, and the employer of the unknown hero will be informed. "Shut your trap, you disgusting old hag!" replies the man, who seems, under cover of darkness, to possess unusual staying power. "Herr Knopf is seriously ill. I wish it was you."
The widow immediately bursts forth again with redoubled energy, a thing no one would have thought possible. With the aid of a pocket flashlight she is trying to identify the malefactor from her window, hut the beam is too weak. "I know who you are!" she screeches. "You are Heinrich Brüggemann! Imprisonment is what you'll get for insulting a helpless widow, you murderer! And as for your mother—"
I stop listening. The widow has a good audience. Almost all the windows are open now. Grunts and applause come from them. I go downstairs.
Knopf is just being brought into the courtyard. He is white, perspiration is running down his face, and the Nietzsche mustache hangs moistly over his lips. With a scream he suddenly frees himself, reels forward a few steps, and unexpectedly springs at the obelisk. He embraces it with both arms and legs like a frog, presses himself against the granite and howls.
I look around. Behind me stands Georg in his purple pajamas, behind him old Frau Kroll without her teeth, in a blue bathrobe, with curling papers in her hair, and behind her Heinrich, who, to my astonishment, is in pajamas without either steel helmet or decorations. However, the pajamas are striped in the Prussian colors, black and white.
"What's the trouble?" Georg asks. "Delirium tremens? Again?"
Knopf has already had it a few times. He saw white elephants coming out of the wall and airships that go through keyholes. "Worse," says the man who has held his ground against the widow Konersmann. It is in fact Heinrich Brüggemann, the plumber. "His liver and kidneys. He thinks they have burst."
"Why are you bringing him here then? Why not to St. Mary's Hospital?"
"He won't go to the hospital."
The Knopf family appear. In front Frau Knopf, behind her the three daughters, all four rumpled, sleepy, and terrified. Knopf howls aloud under a new attack. "Have you telephoned for a doctor?" Georg asks.
"Not yet. We had our hands full getting him here. He wanted to jump into the river."
The four female heads form a mourning chorus around the sergeant major. Heinrich, too, has gone up to him and is trying to persuade him as a man, a comrade, a soldier, and a German to let go of the obelisk and go to bed, especially since the obelisk is swaying under Knopfs weight. Not only is Knopf in danger from the obelisk, Heinrich explains, but. the firm would have to hold him responsible if anything happened to it. It is costly, highly polished SS granite and will certainly be damaged if it falls.
Knopf cannot understand him; with wide-open eyes he is whinnying like a horse who has seen a ghost. I hear Georg in the office telephoning for a doctor. Lisa enters the courtyard in a slightly rumpled evening dress of white satin. She is in blooming health and smells strongly of kümmel. "Cordial greetings from Gerda," she says to me. "She wants you to show up some time."
At this instant a pair of lovers shoot at a gallop from behind the crosses and out of the courtyard. Wilke appears in raincoat and nightgown; Kurt Bach, the other freethinker, follows in black pajamas with a Russian blouse and belt. Knopf continues to howl.
Thank God it is not far to the hospital. The doctor appears shortly. The situation is hurriedly explained to him. It is impossible to pry Knopf loose from the obelisk. And so his comrades pull down his trousers far enough for his skinny rear cheeks to be bared. The doctor, accustomed to difficult situations by his war experience, swabs Knopf with cotton dipped in alcohol, hands Georg a small flashlight, and drives a hypodermic into Knopfs brilliantly lighted posterior. Knopf half looks around, lets go a resounding fart, and slides down from the obelisk. The doctor has jumped back as though Knopf had shot him. Knopfs escorts pick him up. He is still holding on to the foot of the obelisk with his hands, but his resistance is broken. I understand why he rushed to the obelisk in his dread; he has spent beautiful, carefree moments there free of renal colic.
They carry him into the house. "It was to be expected," Georg says to Brüggemann. "How did it happen?"
Brüggemann shakes his head. "I've no idea. He had just won a bet against a man from Münster. Named correctly a schnaps from Spatenbrau and one from Blume's Restaurant. The man from Münster brought them in his car. I was umpire. Then while the man from Münster is fiddling with his wallet, Knopf suddenly gets white as a sheet and begins to sweat. Right after that he is on the floor writhing and vomiting and howling. You've seen the rest. And do you know the worst of it? In all the confusion that fellow from Münster ran off without paying the bet. None of us knows him and in the excitement we didn't get his license number."
"That is indeed horrible," Georg says.
"Fate is what I'd call it."
"Fate," I remark. "If you want to avoid your fate, Herr Brüggemann, then don't go back by way of Hackenstrasse. The widow Konersmann is checking the passers-by; she has borrowed a strong flashlight and she has that in one hand and a beer bottle in the other. Isn't that right, Lisa?"
Lisa nods energetically. "It's a full bottle. If she cracks you on the skull with that, you'll be cooled off for good."
"Damn it!" Brüggemann says. "How can I get out? Is this a blind alley?"
"Fortunately not," I reply. "You can work your way through the back gardens to Bleibtreustrasse. I advise you to leave soon; it's getting light."
Brüggemann disappears, Heinrich Kroll is examining the obelisk for damage, then he likewise disappears. "Such is man," Wilke says rather platitudinously, nodding up at Knopfs windows and over at the garden through which Brüggemann is creeping. Then he starts to move up the stairs again to his workshop. Apparently he is sleeping there tonight and not working.
"Have you observed more floral manifestations on the part of spirits?" I ask.
"No, but I have ordered some books on the subject."
Frau Kroll has suddenly realized that she has forgotten her teeth and takes flight. Kurt Bach is devouring Lisa's bare, brown shoulders with the eye of a connoisseur, but moves on when he finds no answering look.
"Is the old man going to die?" Lisa asks.
"Probably," Georg replies. "It's a wonder he hasn't been dead long since."
The doctor comes out of Knopfs house. "What's the trouble?" Georg asks.
"His liver; it's been due for a long time. I don't think he'll make it this time. Everything wrong. A day or two and it will be all over."
Knopfs wife appears. "You understand, not a drop of alcohol!" the doctor tells her. "Have you searched his bedroom?"
"Thoroughly, Herr Doctor. My daughter and I. We found two more bottles of that devil's brew. Here!"
She gets the bottles, uncorks them and is about to empty them. "Stop!" I say. "That's not entirely necessary. The important thing is that Knopf shouldn't have any, isn't that right, Doctor?"
"Of course."
A strong smell of good schnaps arises. "What am I to do with them in the house?" Frau Knopf complains. "He'll find them anywhere. He's a terrific bloodhound."
"We can relieve you of that responsibility."
Frau Knopf hands one bottle to the doctor and one to me. The doctor throws me a glance. "One man's destroyer is another's nightingale," he says, leaving.
Frau Knopf closes the door behind her. Only Lisa, Georg, and I remain outside. "The doctor thinks that he's going to die, doesn't he?" Lisa asks.
Georg nods. His purple pajamas look black in the late night. Lisa shivers and stands still.
"Servus,"
I say and leave them alone.
From above I see the widow Konersmann like a shadow on patrol in front of her house. She is still on the lookout for Brüggemann. After a while I hear a door being gently closed downstairs. I stare into the night, thinking of Knopf and then of Isabelle. Just as I am getting sleepy I see the widow Konersmann crossing the street. No doubt she believes Brüggemann is hiding and she runs the beam of her flashlight around our courtyard. In front of me on the window sill rests the old rain pipe I used to terrify Knopf. Now I almost regret it. But then I catch sight of the circle of light wavering across our courtyard and I cannot resist. Cautiously I bend forward and breathe into the pipe in a deep voice: "Who disturbs me here?" and add a sigh.
The widow Konersmann stands still as a post. Then the circle of light begins to dance frantically across the courtyard and the tombstones. "May God have mercy on your soul too—" I breathe. I should like to imitate Brügge-mann's style of talking, but control myself. On the strength of what I have said so far the widow Konersmann cannot file a complaint if she should find out what has happened.
She does not find out. She steals along the wall to the street and rushes across to her door. I can hear her begin to hiccup, then all is silent.
Gently I get rid of Roth, the former postman. During the war this little fellow made deliveries in our section of the city. He was a sensitive man and took it very much to heart in those days that he was so often the unwilling bearer of ill tidings. In all the years of peace people had eagerly looked forward to his arrival with the mail, but during the war he became increasingly a figure of fear. He brought army draft notices and the dreaded official envelopes containing the announcement: "Fallen on the field of honor." The longer the war lasted the more he brought, and his appearance became the signal for lamentation, curses, and tears. Then one day he had to deliver one of the dreaded envelopes to himself, and a week later a second. That was too much for him. He grew silent and went quietly mad; the Post Office Department had to pension him off. That meant, for him as for so many other during the inflation, being condemned to death by slow starvation. However, a few friends looked after the lonely old man, and a couple of years after the war he began to go out again. But his mind remains confused. He thinks he is still a postman and goes about in his old visored cap, bringing people fresh news; but now, after the tidings of disaster, he wants to bring only good news. He collects old envelopes and post cards wherever he can find them and delivers them as messages from Russian prison camps. Men believed dead are still alive, he announces. They have not been killed. Soon they will come home.