The Black Obelisk (47 page)

"You're leaving soon?"

"Yes," she replies in surprise.

"And you don't remember anything? Not even the names that are shed at night and the flowers that have voices?"

Isabelle raises her shoulders in bewilderment. "Poems," she exclaims presently, smiling. "I've always loved them. But there are so many! You can't remember them all."

I give up. My foreboding has come true! She is cured, and I have slipped out of her mind like a newspaper dropping from the hands of a sleepy woman. She remembers nothing any more. It is as though she has awakened from an anesthetic. The time up here has been wiped from her memory. She has forgotten everything. She is Geneviève Terhoven and she no longer knows who Isabelle was. She is not lying, I can see that. I have lost her, not as I feared I would, not because she comes from a different social world and is going back to it, but far more completely and irrevocably. She has died. She is alive and breathing and beautiful, but at the moment when the strangeness of her sickness was removed she died, drowned forever. Isabelle, whose heart flew and blossomed, is drowned in Geneviève Terhoven, a well-brought-up young lady of good family who someday will unquestionably marry a rich man and will no doubt become a good mother.

"I must go," she says. "Many thanks again for the organ music."

"Well?" Wernicke asks. "What have you to say?"

"To what?"

"Don't act so dumb. Fräulein Terhoven. You must admit that in the three weeks since you last saw her she has become a quite different person. Complete success!"

"Is that what you call success?"

"What would you call it? She is going back into life, everything is in order, that earlier time has disappeared like a bad dream, she has become a human being again—what more do you want? You've seen her, haven't you? Well then?"

"Yes," I say. "Well then?"

A nurse with a red peasant face brings in a bottle and glasses. "Are we to have the additional pleasure of seeing His Reverence Vicar Bodendiek?" I ask. "I don't know whether Fräulein Terhoven was baptized a Catholic, but since she comes from Alsace I assume so—His Reverence, too, will, then, be full of joy at having retrieved a lamb for his flock from the great chaos."

Wernicke grins. "His Reverence has already expressed his satisfaction. Fraulein Terhoven has been attending mass daily for the past week."

Isabelle, I think. Once she knew that God still hangs on the cross and that it was not just the unbelievers who crucified Him. "Has she been to confession too?" I ask.

"I don't know. It's possible. But is it necessary for someone to confess what he has done while mentally ill? That's an interesting question for an unenlightened Protestant like me."

"It depends on what you mean by mentally ill," I say bitterly, watching that plumber of souls drain a glass of Schloss Reinhartshausener. "No doubt we have different views on the subject. Besides, how can one confess what he has forgotten? No doubt Fraulein Terhoven has suddenly forgotten a good deal."

Wernicke fills his glass again. "Let's finish this before His Reverence arrives. The smell of incense may be holy, but it ruins the bouquet of a wine like this." He takes a sip, rolling his eyes, and says: "Suddenly forgotten? Was it so sudden? There were signs long ago."

He is right. I, too, noticed it earlier. There were moments when Isabelle seemed not to recognize me. I remember the last occasion and drain my glass angrily. Today the wine has no flavor for me.

"It's like an earthquake," Wernicke explains contentedly, beaming with self-satisfaction. "A seaquake. Islands, even continents, that formerly existed disappear and others emerge."

"What about a second seaquake? Does that have the reverse effect?"

"That, too, happens sometimes. But almost always in cases of a different kind; those associated with increasing hebetude. You've seen examples here. Is that what you'd like for Fraulein Terhoven?"

"I want the best for her," I say.

"Well then!"

Wernicke pours the rest of the wine. I remember the hopelessly sick, standing or lying in the corners, with spittle dribbling from their mouths, soiling themselves. "Of course I hope she will never be sick again," I say.

"It is to be assumed that she will not. Hers was one of those cases that will be cured once the causes are eliminated. Everything went very well. Mother and daughter now feel, as sometimes happens in such instances when a death occurs, that in some vague way they have been betrayed—and so they are like orphans and thereby brought closer together than before."

I stare at Wernicke. I have never heard him speak so poetically. But he doesn't mean it altogether seriously. "You'll have a chance to see for yourself at noon," he remarks. "Mother and daughter are coming to lunch."

I want to leave, but something compels me to stay. Anyone given to self-torture does not readily miss a chance for it. Bodendiek appears and is surprisingly human. Then mother and daughter come in, and a commonplace, civilized conversation begins. The older woman is about forty-five, a trifle stout, inconsequentially pretty, and full of light, polished phrases which she scatters effortlessly. She has an unreflective answer for everything.

I watch Geneviève. Sometimes, fleetingly, I think I perceive in her features that other beloved, wild, and disturbed countenance, rising toward the surface like the face of, a drowning woman; but it is instantly submerged in the ripples of the conversation about the modern facilities of the sanitarium—neither lady calls it anything else—the pretty view, the old city, various uncles and aunts in Strasbourg and in Holland, the difficulty of the times, the necessity of faith, the merits of Lothringian wines, and the beauty of Alsace. Not a word of what so overwhelmed and excited me. It is gone as though it had never existed.

Soon I take my leave. "Good-by, Fräulein Terhoven," I say. "I hear you are leaving this week."

She nods. "Are you coming back this evening?" Wernicke asks me.

"Yes, for the evening devotion."

"Then come up to my room for a drink. You'll join us too, won't you, ladies?"

"With pleasure," Isabelle's mother replies. "We were going to evening devotion anyway."

Geneviève does not reply. There is a small crease in her forehead as though she were brooding over something.

The evening is even worse than noon. There is something traitorous about the soft light. I saw Isabelle in chapel; the glow of the candles hovered over her hair. She hardly moved. The faces of the patients swung around at the sound of the organ like bright, flat moons. Isabelle was praying; she was well.

Afterward it gets no better. I succeed in meeting Geneviève at the door of the chapel and walking alone with her for a way. We go along the
allée
.
I do not know what to say. Geneviève pulls her coat around her. "How cold the evenings are already," she says.

"Yes. So you are leaving this week?"

"That's what I plan. It has been a long time since I was home."

"Are you glad?"

"Certainly."

There is nothing more to say. But I can't help myself—her walk is the same, her face in the darkness, the soft present
ment—"Isabelle," I say as we are about to emerge from the 
allée
.

"I beg your pardon?" she asks in amazement.

"Oh," I say. "That was just a name."

For a moment she looks at me. "You must be mistaken," she replies then. "My first name is Geneviève."

"Yes, of course. Isabelle was someone else's name. We talked about her occasionally."

"So? Perhaps. One talks of so much," she remarks apologetically. "Then you forget this and that."

"Oh yes."

"Was it someone you knew?"

"Yes, that was it."

She laughs softly. "How romantic. Forgive me for not remembering at once. Now I recall."

I stare at her. She remembers nothing, as I can see. She is lying to be polite. "So much has happened in the last weeks," she says lightly and in a slightly superior way. "Everything gets a little confused." And then, once more out of courtesy, she asks: "How has it been going recently?"

"What?"

"Oh that! It is over! She died."

She stops horrified. "Died? 1 am so sorry. Forgive me, I didn't know—"

"It makes no difference. I only knew her slightly anyway."

"Died suddenly?"

. "Yes," I reply. "But in such a way that she didn't even know it. That counts for something."

"Of course." She extends her hand to me. "It really makes me very sad."

Her hand is firm and narrow and cool—no longer feverish. It is the hand of a young lady who has been guilty of a slight
faux pas
and has rectified it. "A beautiful name, Isabelle," she says. "I used to hate my given name."

"And now you don't?"

"No," Geneviève says in a friendly way.

She remains friendly too. It is the odious courtesy to people in a small city whom you meet in passing and will soon forget. Suddenly I am aware of being clad in an ill-fitting suit, made by Sulzblick, the tailor, out of my old uniform. Geneviève, on the other hand, is beautifully dressed. She always was, but it has never struck me so forcibly. Geneviève and her mother have decided to go to Berlin for a few weeks before returning home. Her mother is all consideration and affection. "The theater! And the concerts! It's always so stimulating to be in a real metropolis. And the shops! The new styles!"

She pats Geneviève's hand. "We'll just spoil ourselves thoroughly for once, won't we?"

Geneviève nods. Wernicke beams. They have caught her in their net. But just what have they caught? I wonder. Perhaps it is something that is buried, hidden in each of us, but what, in fact, is it? And is it then in me too? Has it, too, been caught in a net or was it never free? Does it exist; is it something that existed before me and will exist afterward, something more important than I? Or was it only a moment of confusion that seemed profound, a distortion of the senses, an illusion, nonsense that seemed like wisdom, as Wernicke maintains? But then why did I love it; why did it leap upon me like a leopard leaping on an ox; why can I not forget it? Was it not, despite Wernicke, like opening a door in a locked room so that you could see rain and lightning and the stars?

I get up. "What's the matter with you?" Wernicke asks. "Why, you're as jumpy as—" he pauses and then goes on—"as the dollar exchange."

"Oh, the dollar," Geneviève's mother says with a sigh. "What a misfortune! Luckily Uncle Gaston—"

I do not listen to what Uncle Gaston has done. Suddenly I am outdoors. I only remember saying to Isabelle, "Thanks for everything," and her surprised reply: "But for what?"

Slowly I walk down the hill. Good night, sweet, wild heart, I think. Farewell, Isabelle! You have not drowned! You have flown away, or rather you have suddenly become invisible, like the ancient gods; a wave length has changed; you are still here, but you are no longer to be touched; you will always be here and you will never disappear. Everything is always here; nothing is ever destroyed. It's just that light and shade pass over it; it is always here, the countenance before birth and after death, and sometimes it shines through what we call life and dazzles us for an instant and afterward we are never the same!

I notice that I am walking faster. I breathe deeply and then break into a run. I am wet with sweat; my back is wet. I come to the gate and then go back. I still have the same feeling; it is like a mighty liberation; every axis suddenly runs through my heart, birth and death are only words, the wild geese have been flying over me since the beginning of the world, and there are no longer any questions or any answers!

Farewell, Isabelle!
Salute
,
Isabelle! Farewell, Life!
Salute
,
Life!

Much later, I notice it is raining. I lift my face to the drops and taste them. Then I walk to the gate. A tall figure, smelling of wine and incense, is waiting there. We walk through the gate together. The watchman closes it behind us. "Well?" Bodendiek asks. "Where have you been? Searching for God!"

"No. I have found Him."

He squints at me suspiciously from under his broad-brimmed hat. "Where? In nature?"

"I don't know where. Is He to be found in special places?"

"At the altar," Bodendiek rumbles and then, pointing to the right, "This is my way. And yours?"