The Black Obelisk (9 page)

"The pastor says that mortal sin—"

"Dear lady," I interrupt her, "God is far more compassionate than the priests, believe me."

I know now what torments her. It is not so much the un-consecrated grave; it is the thought that her husband, as a suicide, must burn in hell for all eternity and that he could perhaps get off with a couple of hundred thousand years in purgatory if he could be buried in the Catholic cemetery.

"It was on account of the money," she says. "It was in the savings bank, a guaranteed deposit for five years; he could not withdraw it. It was the dowry for my daughter by my first marriage. He was her guardian. When he withdrew the money two weeks ago, it was not worth anything at all, and her fiance broke off the engagement. He thought we would have a good dowry. Two years ago it would still have been enough, but now it's not worth anything. My daughter did nothing but weep. That's what he couldn't stand. He thought it was his fault; he should have paid stricter attention. But after all, it was a guaranteed deposit; we couldn't withdraw it. That way the interest was higher."

"How was he expected to pay stricter attention? This sort of thing happens to lots of people nowadays. After all, he wasn't a banker—"

"No. A bookkeeper. The neighbors—"

"Don't bother about what the neighbors say. They're all malicious gossips. Just leave everything to God."

I feel that I am not very convincing, but what can one say to a woman in such circumstances? Certainly not what I really think.

She dried her eyes. "I ought not to tell you all this. What concern is it of yours? Forgive me! Sometimes one doesn't know where to—"

"It doesn't matter," I say. "We are used to it. All the people who come here have lost somebody."

"Yes—but not the same way as—"

"Oh yes," I explain. "In these times that happens much oftener than you think. Seven in the last month alone. They were people who no longer knew which way to turn. Respectable people, I mean; the disreputable ones get by."

She looks at me. "You think that one can put up a tombstone even when it's not in consecrated ground?"

"If you have a permit for a grave, you certainly can. Unquestionably in the municipal cemetery. If you wish you can pick one out now. You don't need to take it until everything is arranged."

She looks around. Then she points to the third smallest headstone. "What does one like that cost?"

It's always the same. The poor never ask the price of the smallest ones first: it's as though they avoided doing it out of a strange courtesy toward death and the dead. They do not want to ask about the cheapest first; whether they take it later on is another matter.

There's nothing I can do to help her; that piece of stone costs one hundred thousand marks. She opens her tired eyes in alarm. "We can't afford that. It's much more than—"

I can well imagine it is more than is left of the inheritance. "Then take this small one," I say. "Or simply a plaque without a stone. Look, here is one—it costs forty thousand marks and is very handsome. After all, what you want is for people to know where your husband is buried, and a plaque is just as good for that as a stone."

She examines the sandstone plaque. "Yes—but—"

She probably has barely enough for the next month's rent. Nevertheless, she doesn't want to buy the cheapest—as though that made any difference at all to the poor devil! If, instead, she had had more understanding earlier and had carried on less about her daughter, perhaps he would still be alive. "We could gild the inscription," I say. "Then it will look very dignified and distinguished."

"Will the inscription cost extra?"

"No. It's included in the price."

That is not true. But I can't help myself; she is so sparrow-like in her black clothes. Now if she wants a long quotation from the Bible I am sunk; the cutting would cost more than the plaque. But all she wants is the name and the dates 1875-1923.

She pulls a package of bills out of her pocket; they have been crumpled and then carefully smoothed out and tied in a bundle. I take a deep breath—payment in advance! That hasn't happened for a long time. Earnestly she counts out two piles. There is not much left over. "Forty thousand. Will you count it?"

"I don't need to. I'm sure it's correct."

It must be correct. She has certainly counted it over many times. And who but she would stoutly pay in advance? Why else had her husband committed suicide? "I'll tell you something," I say. "We'll give you a cement grave enclosure too. Then it will look very neat and separate."

She looks at me anxiously. "For nothing," I say.

The ghost of a sad little smile flits across her face. "That's the first time anyone has been kind to me since it happened. Not even my daughter—she says the disgrace—" .

She wipes the tears away. I am very much embarrassed 
and feel like the actor Gaston Münch in Sudermann's
Honor
at the city theater. Once she is gone, I pour myself a drink of schnaps as a bracer. Then I remember that Georg has not yet returned from his interview with Riesenfeld at the bank and I become suspicious of myself; perhaps I have been kind to this woman simply to bribe God. One good deed in return for another—a grave enclosure and an inscription against Riesenfeld's acceptance of a ninety-day note and a fat shipment of granite. This cheers me up so much that I have a second drink. Then I see on the obelisk outside the traces left by Sergeant Major Knopf, and I get a pail of water to wash them away, cursing him aloud. Knopf, however, in his bedroom is sleeping the sleep of the just.

"Only six weeks," I say in disappointment.

Georg laughs. "A six-week note is not to be sneezed at. The bank wouldn't stand for any more. Who knows where the dollar will be then? Besides, Riesenfeld has promised to come by again in a month. Then we can make a new agreement."

"Do you believe he will?"

Georg shrugs his shoulders. "Why not? Perhaps Lisa will draw him here again. He was raving about her at the bank like Petrarch about Laura."

"Good thing he didn't see her close up in the daylight."

"That's true of a lot of things." Georg stops short and looks at me. "But why Lisa? She really doesn't look so bad."

"In the morning she sometimes has regular sacks under her eyes. And she certainly doesn't look romantic. Vulgar rather. In a vigorous style."

"Romantic!" Georg snorts contemptuously. "What does that mean? There are different kinds of romanticism! And robustness and vulgarity have their own charm!"

I look at him sharply. Can he by any chance have his own eye on Lisa? He is strangely secretive about his personal affairs. "I think what Riesenfeld means by romanticism is an adventure in high society," I say. "Not an affair with a horse butcher's wife."

Georg waves my objection aside. "Where's the difference? High society often behaves more vulgarly than a horse butcher."

Georg is our expert on high society. He subscribes to the
Berliner Tageblatt
and reads it principally for the news about art and society. He is extremely well informed. No actress 
can marry without his knowing it; every important divorce in the aristocracy is diamond-scratched in his memory; he never makes a mistake even after three or four marriages; it's as though he were a bookkeeper of society. He keeps track of all the theatrical performances, reads the critics, knows precisely about the high life on the Kurfürstendamm. And not only that: he follows international social life as well: film stars and the queens of society—he reads the movie magazines, and a friend in England sometimes sends him the
Tatler
and a few other elegant periodicals. Then he is exhilarated for days. He himself has never been in Berlin and has been abroad only as a soldier in France. He hates his profession, but he had to take it over after his father's death; Heinrich was too simpleminded. The magazines and pictures help to assuage his disappointment; they are his weakness and his recreation.

"A vulgar lady of high society is for connoisseurs," I say. "Not for Riesenfeld. That cast-iron devil has the sensitiveness of mimosa."

"Riesenfeld!" Georg makes a contemptuous face. He considers the director of the Odenwald Works, with his superficial fancy for French ladies, a miserable upstart. What does he know about the delicious scandal involved in the divorce of the Countess Homburg? Or about Elisabeth Bergner's last
première
?
He doesn't even know their names! But Georg knows the Almanach de Gotha and the artist's lexicon almost by heart. "We really ought to send Lisa a bouquet of flowers," he says. "She helped us without knowing it."

Once more I look at him sharply. "Do it yourself," I reply. "And tell me, did Riesenfeld throw in a memorial cross polished on all sides?"

"Two. We have Lisa to thank for the second. I told him we would put it where she couldn't help seeing it. It seemed to be important to him."

"We could put it here in the office window. Then when she gets up in the morning it will make a strong impression. I could paint 'Memento Mori' on it in gold. What's the lunch at Eduard's today?"

"German beefsteak."

"Hacked meat, eh? Why is hacked meat German?"

"Because we're a warlike people and even in time of peace we hack up each other's faces in duels. You smell of schnaps. Why? Surely not because of Erna?"

"No. Because we all must die. Sometimes that fact staggers me even though I've known it for some time."

"That's very creditable. Especially in our profession. Do you know what I'd like?"

"Of course. You would like to be the mate on a whaler, or a copra dealer in Tahiti, or the discoverer of the North Pole, an explorer in the Amazon, Einstein or Sheik Ibrahim with a harem of women of twenty different nationalities, including the Circassians, who are supposedly so fiery you have to put on an asbestos mask to embrace them."

"That of course. But in addition I'd like to be dumb; beaming and dumb. That's the greatest gift in our times."

"Dumb like Parsifal?"

"A bit less of the savior. Credulously, peacefully, healthily dumb."

"Come along," I say. "You're hungry. Our mistake is that we are neither dumb nor clever. Always betwixt and between like monkeys in the branches. That makes us weary and sometimes sad. Man needs to know where he belongs."

"Really?"

"No," I reply. "That only makes him lazy and fat. But how would it be if we went to a concert this evening to make up for the Red Mill? They're playing Mozart."

"I'm going to sleep early tonight," Georg explains. "That's my Mozart. You go alone. Expose yourself bravely and alone to the onslaught of the good. That is not without danger and often creates more havoc than simple evil."

"Yes," I say, thinking of the sparrow-like woman of this morning.

It is late afternoon. I am reading the family items in the newspapers and cutting out the death notices. That always cheers me and restores my faith in humanity—especially after the evenings when we have had to entertain our suppliers or agents. If things went according to the death notices, man would be absolutely perfect. There you find only first-class fathers, immaculate husbands, model children, unselfish, self-sacrificing mothers, grandparents mourned by all, businessmen in contrast with whom Francis of Assisi would seem an infinite egotist, generals dripping with kindness, humane prosecuting attorneys, almost holy munitions makers—in short, the earth seems to have been populated by a horde of wingless angels without one's having been aware of it. Pure love, which in reality is to be found so seldom, shines on all sides in death, and is the commonest thing of all. The highest virtues are to be found in abundance, sincere concern, profound piety, selfless devotion; even the survivors know what parts to play—they are bowed with grief, their loss is irreparable, they will never forget the dear departed—it is elevating to read all this, and one can feel proud to belong to a race possessed of such noble feelings.

I cut out the death notice of Niebuhr, the baker. He is described as a kindly, conscientious, and well-loved husband and father. I myself have seen Frau Niebuhr rushing from the house with flying braids when the kindly Niebuhr was after her with his leather belt; and I have seen son Roland's broken arm which his conscientious father inflicted by throwing him out of. a second-story window in a sudden attack of rage. Nothing better could have happened to the careworn widow than for that blustering tyrant finally to be carried off by a stroke as he was baking breakfast rolls and pastry; nevertheless, she does not think so now. All the woe that Niebuhr caused her has suddenly disappeared. He had become an ideal. Man, the eternal liar, finds brilliant scope for his particular talent when death occurs and calls it piety, and the astonishing thing about it is that he believes as firmly in it as though he had put a rat into a hat and then drawn out a snow-white rabbit.