The Black Obelisk

Chapter Ten

In the mild twilight the glass man is standing motionless in front of a rose bed. Gregory VII is strolling along the avenue of chestnut trees. A middle-aged nurse is taking a bent old man for a walk; he keeps trying to pinch her muscular posterior and after each attempt giggles happily. Two men are sitting beside me on a bench, each explaining to the other why he is mad and neither paying the slightest attention. Three women

in striped dresses are watering the flowers, moving silently through the evening with their tin cans.

I am perched on a bench beside the rose bed. Here everything is peaceful and right. No one is disturbed because the dollar has risen twenty thousand marks in a single day. No one hangs himself on that account, as an elderly couple did last night in the city. They were found this morning in the wardrobe—each on a length of clothesline. Except for them there was nothing in the wardrobe; everything had been sold or pawned, even the bed and the wardrobe itself. When the purchaser of the furniture came to get it he discovered the bodies. They were clinging together and their swollen, bluish tongues were pointed at each other. They were very light and could be taken down quickly. Both were freshly washed, their hair brushed, and their clothes clean and neatly mended. The purchaser, a full-blooded furniture dealer, vomited when he saw them and announced that he did not want the wardrobe. It was not until evening that he changed his mind and sent for it. By then the bodies were lying on the bed and had to be removed because the bed, too, was to be taken. Neighbors loaned a couple of tables which served as biers for the old people, their heads covered with tissue paper. The tissue paper was the only thing in the apartment that still belonged to them. They left a letter in which they said they had originally intended to kill themselves by gas, but the gas company had turned it off because the bill was so long overdue. And so they asked the furniture dealer’s pardon for the trouble they were causing him.

Isabelle approaches. She is wearing blue shorts that leave her knees bare, a yellow blouse, and an amber necklace.

I have not seen her for some time. After devotion in church I have slipped away each time and gone home. It was not easy to forgo the fine meal and the wine with Bodendiek and Wernicke, but I preferred peace and quiet with sandwiches and potato salad and Gerda.

“Where have you been?” Isabelle asks me as she always does.

“Out there,” I say vaguely. “Where money is the one thing of importance.”

She sits down on the arm of the bench. Her legs are very brown, as though she had spent a lot of time in the sun. The two men beside me look up ill-temperedly, then rise and walk away. Isabelle slides down onto the bench. “Why do children die, Rudolf?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

I do not look at her. I am determined never again to become involved with her; it is bad enough that she is sitting there beside me with her long legs and her tennis shorts as though she had guessed that from now on I intend to live by Georg’s recipe.

“Why are they born if they are going to die right away?”

“You must ask Vicar Bodendiek about that. He maintains that God keeps a record of every hair that falls from everyone’s head and that all of it has a meaning and a moral lesson.”

Isabelle laughs. “God keeps a record? Of whom? Of Himself? Why? After all, He knows everything, doesn’t He?”

“Yes,” I said, suddenly angry without knowing why. “He is omniscient, just, kind, and filled with love—nevertheless, children die and the mothers they need die and no one knows why there is so much misery in the world.”

Isabelle turns toward me with a start. She is no longer laughing. “Why isn’t everyone simply happy, Rudolf?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps because then God would be bored.”

“No,” she says quickly. “That’s not the reason.”

“What is it then?”

“Because He is afraid.”

“Afraid? Of what?”

“If everyone were happy, there would be no more need of God.”

Now I am looking at her. Her eyes are very transparent. Her face is brown and thinner than before. “He only exists for unhappiness,” she says. “That is when you need Him and pray to Him. That’s why He causes it.”

“There are people, too, who pray to God because they are happy.”

“Really?” Isabelle smiles incredulously. “Then they pray because they are afraid they won’t stay happy. Everything is fear, Rudolf. Don’t you know that?”

The cheerful old man is led past us by his muscular nurse. From a window in the main building comes the high whine of a vacuum cleaner. I look around. The window is open but barred, a black hole out of which the vacuum cleaner screams like a damned soul.

“Everything is fear,” Isabelle repeats. “Aren’t you ever afraid?”

“I don’t know,” I reply, still on my guard. “I guess so. I was often afraid in the war.”

“That’s not what I mean, that is reasonable fear. I mean nameless fear.”

“Of what? Of life?”

She shakes her head. “No. An earlier fear.”

“Of death?”

She shakes her head again. I ask no further questions. I don’t want to become involved. We sit in silence for a time in the twilight. Once more I have the feeling that Isabelle is not sick, but I suppress the thought. If it arises, confusion will follow, and I don’t want that. Finally Isabelle moves. “Why don’t you say something?” she asks.

“What do words amount to?”

“A great deal,” she whispers. “Everything. Are you afraid of them?”

I consider the question. “Very likely we are all a little afraid of big words. They have been used to tell such dreadful lies. Perhaps we’re afraid of our feelings too. We no longer trust them.”

Isabelle draws her legs up on the bench. “But you need them, darling,” she murmurs. “Otherwise how can you live?”

The vacuum cleaner has stopped whining. Suddenly it is very quiet. The cool smell of damp earth rises from the flower beds. A bird calls in the chestnut trees, always the same call. The evening is suddenly a scale with an equal weight of the world on both sides. I feel as though it were balanced weightlessly on my breast. Nothing can happen to me, I think, as long as I go on breathing quietly.

“Are you afraid of me?” Isabelle whispers.

No, I think, shaking my head; you are the one human being I am not afraid of. Not even in words. In your presence they are never too big and they are never ridiculous. You always understand them, for you still live in a world where words and feelings and lies and vision are one and the same thing.

“Why don’t you say something?” she asks.

I shrug my shoulders. “Sometimes you can’t say anything, Isabelle. And often it is hard to let go.” “Let go of what?”

“One’s self. There are many obstacles.” “A knife can’t cut itself, Rudolf. Why are you afraid?” She is perched on the bench, beautiful and confiding and completely strange. “It can only grow dull,” she says, “if you don’t use it. Is that what you want?” “I don’t know, Isabelle.”

“Don’t wait too long, darling. Otherwise it will be too late. One needs words,” she murmurs.

I make no reply. “Against fear, Rudolf,” she says. “They are like lamps. They help. Do you see how gray everything is getting? Blood is not red any more. Why don’t you help me?”

I stop resisting. “You sweet, strange, and beloved heart,” I say. “If only I could help you!”

She bends forward and puts her arms around my shoulders. “Come with me! Help me! They are calling!”

“Who is calling?”

“Can’t you hear them? The voices. They are always calling!”

“No one is calling, Isabelle. Only your heart. But what is it calling?”

I feel her breath brushing my face. “Love me, then it won’t call any more,” she says.

“I love you.”

She lets herself sink down beside me. Now her eyes are closed. It grows darker and I see the glass man once more slowly strutting past. A nurse is bringing in a few old people who have been sitting on the benches, bent and motionless, like dark bundles of woe. “It’s time,” she says in our direction.

I nod and stay where I am. “They’re calling,” Isabelle whispers. “You can never find them. Who has so many tears?”

“No one,” I say. “No one in the world, beloved heart.”

“She makes no reply. She is breathing like a tired child at my side. Then I pick her up and carry her along the allée to the pavilion where she lives.

As I set her down she wavers and clings to me. She murmurs something I cannot understand and lets me lead her indoors. The entry is bright with a shadowless, milky light. I put her in a cane chair in the hall. She lies there with closed eyes as though she had been taken down from an invisible cross. Two nuns in black come by. They are on their way to chapel. For a moment they seem to be coming to remove Isabelle and bury her. Then the attendant in white arrives and leads her off.

The Mother Superior has sent us a second bottle of Moselle. Nevertheless, Bodendiek, to my amazement, left directly after the meal. Wernicke is still at table. The weather is calm and the patients are as quiet as they ever are.

“Why aren’t the completely hopeless cases killed?” I ask.

“Would you kill them?” Wernicke asks in return.

“I don’t know. It’s the same as when someone is dying slowly and hopelessly and you know he is suffering. Would you give him an injection to save him days of pain?”

Wernicke makes no reply.

“Fortunately Bodendiek is not here,” I say. “So we don’t have to indulge in a moral and religious discussion. I had a comrade whose belly was ripped open like a butcher shop. He pleaded with us to shoot him. We took him to the field hospital. There he screamed for three days, then he died. Three days is a long time when you’re roaring with pain. I have seen many people perish. Not die—perish. All of them would have been helped by an injection. My mother among them.”

Wernicke remains silent

“All right,” I say. “I know: to put an end to life in any creature is always like murder. Since my war experience I don’t even like to kill a fly. Nevertheless, my portion of veal tasted fine tonight, and yet a calf had to be killed so that we could have it. Those are the old paradoxes, the incomplete logic. Life is a miracle, even in a calf or a fly. Particularly in a fly, that acrobat with its thousand-faceted eyes. It is always a miracle. But it always comes to an end. Why in time of peace do we kill a sick dog and not a suffering human being? And yet we murder millions in useless wars.”

Wernicke still makes no reply. A big June bug is buzzing around the lamp. It strikes the bulb, falls, scrambles up, and flies once more, circling the light afresh. Experience has taught it nothing.

“Bodendiek, that son of the Church, naturally has an answer for everything,” I say. “Animals have no soul; human beings do. But what becomes of that bit of soul when some convolution in the brain is injured? Where is it when someone becomes an idiot? Is it already in heaven? Or is it waiting somewhere for the twisted remnant that still causes a human body to slaver, eat, and defecate? I’ve seen some of your cases in the closed wards—animals are gods by comparison. What has become of the soul of an idiot? Is it divisible? Or is it hanging like an invisible balloon over the poor, muttering skull?”

Wernicke makes a gesture as though brushing away an insect.

“All right,” I say. “That’s a question for Bodendiek, who will answer it with the greatest ease. Bodendiek can solve everything with the great unknown God, with heaven and hell, the reward for suffering and the punishment for wickedness. No one has ever had any proof—faith alone makes one blessed, according to Bodendiek. But then why have we been given reason, the critical faculty, and the yearning for proof? Just in order not to use them? That’s a strange game for the great Unknown to play! And what is reverence for life? Fear of death? Fear, always fear! Why? And why can we ask questions when there are no answers?”

“Finished?” Wernicke asks.

“No—but I’m not going to ask you anything more.”

“Good. I couldn’t answer anyway. You know that at least, don’t you?”

“Of course. Why should it be just you who could when all the libraries in the world have only speculations for answer?”

The June bug has come to grief on its second flight. It scrambles to its legs again and begins a third. Its wings are like polished blue steel. It is a beautiful utilitarian machine; but faced by light it is like an alcoholic with a bottle of schnaps.

Wernicke pours the remainder of the Moselle into our glasses. “How long were you in the war?”

“Three years.”

“Remarkable!”

I make no reply. I can guess what he is thinking and I have no desire to go into all that again. Instead he asks: “Do you believe that reason is a part of the soul?”

“I don’t know. But do you believe that the debased creatures creeping about and soiling themselves in the closed wards still have souls?”

Wernicke reaches for his glass. “All that is simple for me,” he says. “I’m a scientist. I don’t believe in anything at all. I simply observe. Bodendiek, on the other hand, believes a priori! Between the two you flutter about in uncertainty. Do you see that June bug?”

The June bug is engaged in its fifth attack. He will go on doing it until he dies. Wernicke turns off the lamp. “There, that will help.”

The night comes in, big and blue, through the open window, bringing with it the smell of earth, of flowers, and the sparkling of the stars. Everything I have said immediately seems to me dreadfully silly. The June bug makes one more buzzing circuit and then steers safely through the window.

“Chaos,” Wernicke says. “Is it really chaos? Or is it only so for us? Have you ever considered how the world would be if we had one more sense?”

“No.”

“But with one sense less?”

I reflect. “Then you would be blind, or deaf, or you couldn’t taste. It would make a big difference.”

“And with one sense more? Why should we always be limited to five? Why couldn’t we perhaps develop six someday? Or eight? Or twelve? Wouldn’t the world be completely different? Perhaps with the sixth our concept of time would disappear. Or our concept of space. Or of death. Or of pain. Or of morality. Certainly our present concept of life. We wander through our existence with pretty limited organs. A dog can hear better than any human being. A bat finds its way blind through all obstacles. A butterfly has a radio receiver that enables it to fly for miles directly to its mate. Migrating birds are vastly superior to us in their orientation. Snakes can hear with their skin. There are hundreds of such examples in natural history. So how can we know anything for certain? The extension of one organ or the development of a new one—and the world changes, life changes, and our concept of God changes. Prost!”

I lift my glass and drink. The Moselle is tart and earthy. “And so it’s better to wait till we have a sixth sense, eh?” I say.

“That’s not necessary. You can do what you like. But it’s a good thing to know that one more sense would knock all our conclusions into a cocked hat. That puts an end to too much solemnity, doesn’t it? How’s the wine?”

“Good. How is Fräulein Terhoven? Better?”

“Worse. Her mother was here; she didn’t recognize her.”

“Perhaps she didn’t want to.”

“That’s practically the same thing; she didn’t recognize her. She screamed at her to go away. A typical case.”

“Why?”

“Do you want to listen to a long lecture on schizophrenia, mother complexes, flight from one’s self, and the effects of shock?”

“Yes,” I say. “Today I do.”

“You won’t hear it. Only the essentials. A split personality is usually flight from one’s self.”

“What is one’s self?”

Wernicke looks at me. “We’ll not go into that today. Flight into another personality. Or into several. Usually, however, the patient keeps returning for a shorter or longer period into his own. Not Geneviève. Not for a long time. You, for example, have never seen her as she really is.”

“She seems quite reasonable as she is now,” I say without conviction.

Wernicke laughs. “What is reason? Logical thought?”

I think about the two new senses we are to have and make no reply. “Is she very sick?” I ask.

“According to our experience, she is. But there have been quick and often amazing cures.”

“Cures—from what?”

“From her sickness,” Wernicke says, lighting a cigarette.

“She is often quite happy. Why don’t you leave her the way she is?”

“Because her mother is paying for the treatment,” Wernicke explains dryly. “Besides, she is not happy.”

“Do you believe she would be happier if she were healthy?”

“Probably not. She is sensitive, intelligent, obviously full of imagination, and probably the bearer of a hereditary taint. Qualities that do not necessarily make for happiness. If she had been happy, she would hardly have taken flight.”

“Then why isn’t she left in peace?”

“Yes, why not?” Wernicke says. “I have often asked myself that question. Why operate on the sick when you know the operation will not help? Shall we write down a list of whys? It would be long. One of the whys would be: Why don’t you drink your wine and shut up? And why don’t you pay attention to the night instead of to your immature brain? Why do you talk about life instead of living it?”

He stands up and stretches. “I must make my evening rounds in the closed wards. Want to come along?”

“Yes.”

“Put on a white gown. I’ll take you to a special ward. Afterward you’ll either be sick or able to enjoy your wine with profound thankfulness.”

“The bottle’s empty.”

“I have another in my room. Perhaps we’ll need it. Do you know what’s remarkable? For your twenty-five years you’ve seen a considerable amount of death, suffering, and human idiocy—nevertheless, you seem to have learned nothing from all of it except to ask the silliest questions imaginable. But probably that’s the way of the world—when we have finally learned something we’re too old to apply it—and so it goes, wave after wave, generation after generation. No one learns anything at all from anyone else. Come along!”

We are sitting in the Café Central—Georg, Willy, and I. This night I did not want to stay at home alone. Wernicke has shown me a ward in the insane asylum I had never seen before—where the war casualties are, men with head wounds, men who were buried, and men who went to pieces. In the mild summer evening this ward stood there like a dark dugout amid the song of nightingales. The war, which has already been almost forgotten by everyone, still goes on ceaselessly in these rooms. Grenades explode in these poor ears; the eyes reflect, just as they did four years ago, an incredulous horror; bayonets continue to bore into defenseless stomachs, hourly, tanks crush the screaming wounded, flattening them like flounders; the noise of battle, the crash of hand grenades, the splitting of skulls, the roar of mines, the suffocation in collapsing dugouts, they all have been preserved here through a horrible black magic and go on silently in this pavilion in the midst of roses and summer. Orders are given and inaudible orders are obeyed. Beds are trenches and dugouts, constantly buried and constantly excavated anew; there is dying and killing, strangling and suffocation; gas sweeps through these rooms and agonies of terror find expression in shouts and creeping and horrified groans and tears and often simply in a silent cowering in a corner, compressed into the smallest possible space, with faces pressed hard against the wall—

“Stand up!” youthful voices suddenly shout behind us. A number of guests spring up smartly from their tables. The café orchestra is playing “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.” This is the fourth time tonight.

It is not the orchestra that is so nationalistic, nor the host. It is a group of young ruffians trying to make themselves important. Every half-hour one of them goes to the orchestra and commands the national anthem. He does this as though he were riding forth to battle. The orchestra does not dare to refuse, and so the anthem rolls out instead of the overture to “Dichter und Bauer.” Then each time comes the command “Stand up!” from all sides—for one has to rise from one’s seat when the national anthem is played, especially since it has brought two million dead, a lost war, and the inflation.

“Stand up!” screams a seventeen-year-old ruffian who could not have been more than twelve at the end of the war.

“Kiss my ass,” I reply, “and go back to school.”

“Bolshevist!” shouts the youngster, who almost certainly doesn’t know what that means. “Here are some Bolshevists, comrades!”

The purpose of these good-for-nothings is to start a row.

They keep ordering the national anthem, and each time a number of people do not get up because it seems so silly. Then with blazing eyes the brawlers descend on them, looking for a fight. Somewhere a couple of cashiered officers are directing them and feeling important too.

A dozen are now standing around our table. “Stand up or there’ll be trouble!”

“What trouble?” Willy asks.

“You’ll see soon enough! Cowards! Betrayers of your country! Up!”

“Get away from our table,” Georg says. “Do you think we need directions from minors?”

A man of about thirty pushes his way through the crowd. “Have you no respect for your national anthem?”

“Not in cafés when it’s being used to start a brawl,” Georg replies. “And now cut out this nonsense and leave us in peace!”

“Nonsense? Do you call a German’s most sacred feelings nonsense? You’ll pay for that! Where were you during the war, you shirker?”

“In the trenches,” Georg replies, “unfortunately.”

“Anyone can say that! Prove it!”

Willy gets up. He is a giant. The music has just stopped. “Prove it?” Willy says. “Here!” He lifts one leg a little, turns his posterior lightly toward the speaker and there is an explosion like a medium-sized cannon. “That,” Willy says conclusively, “is all I learned from the Prussians. Formerly I had nicer manners.”

The leader of the crowd has sprung back involuntarily. “You said coward, didn’t you?” Willy asks grinning. “You seem a little jumpy yourself!”

The host has come up accompanied by three husky waiters. “Quiet, gentlemen, I must insist! No arguments here!”

The orchestra is now playing “Birdsong at Evening.” The defenders of the national anthem retire with dark threats. It’s possible that they will fall on us outside. We look them over; they’re sitting together close to the door. There are about twenty of them. The battle will be pretty hopeless for us.

But suddenly unexpected help arrives. A dried-up little man approaches our table. He is Bodo Ledderhose, a dealer in hides and old iron. We were with him in France. “Children,” he says, “I’ve just noticed what’s going on. Am here with my club. Over behind those columns. We’re a full dozen

and can give you a hand if those ass-faces want to start anything. Agreed?”

“Agreed, Bodo. You were sent by God.”

“Not that. But this is no place for respectable people. We just dropped in for a glass of beer. Unfortunately the host here has the best beer in the city. Otherwise he’s an unprincipled asshole.”

It strikes me that Bodo is going a bit far to demand principles from so simple a human organ; but it is elevating just the same. In bad times one ought to make impossible demands. “We’re going soon,” Bodo continues. “Are you?”

“Right away.”

We pay and get up. Before we reach the door the guardians of the national anthem are already outside. As though by magic they suddenly have cudgels, stones, and brass knuckles in their hands. They stand in a half-circle in front of the entrance.

Bodo suddenly is between us. He pushes us to one side and his twelve men walk through the door in front of us. “Something you want, you snot faces?” Bodo asks.

The guardians of the Reich stare at us. “Cowards!” says the leader finally, the man who was about to fall on three of us with twenty men. “We’ll catch you yet!”

“Very likely,” Willy says. “That’s why we spent a couple of years in the trenches. But see to it that you always have odds of three or four on your side. Superior force is very reassuring to patriots.”

We walk down Grossestrasse with Bodo’s club. The sky is full of stars. There are lights in the store windows. Sometimes when you are with wartime comrades it still seems strange and splendid and breathtaking and incomprehensible that you can wander about this way, free and alive. Suddenly I understand what Wernicke meant about thankfulness. It is a thankfulness not directed toward anyone—a simple gratitude at having escaped for a while longer—for eventually, of course, no one really escapes.

“What you need is another café,” Bobo says. “How would ours do? We haven’t any roaring apes there. Come along, we’ll show it to you!”

They show it to us. Downstairs they serve coffee, seltzer water, beer, and ice cream—upstairs are the assembly rooms. Bodo’s club is a singing society. The city crawls with clubs, which all have their weekly meetings, their statues and bylaws, and are very serious and self-important. Bodo’s club meets Thursdays on the second floor. “We have a good polyphonic male choir,” he says. “Only we’re a little weak in first tenors. It’s a funny thing, but probably a lot of first tenors fell during the war. And the rising generation isn’t old enough yet—their voices are just starting to change.”

“Willy is a first tenor,” I tell him.

“Really?” Bodo looks at him with interest. “Sing this, Willy.”

Bodo flutes like a thrush. Willy flutes in turn. “Good material,” Bodo says. “Now try this!”

Willy manages the second too. “Join our club,” Bodo now urges him. “If you don’t like it you can always resign later.”

Willy demurs a little, but to our astonishment swallows the bait. He is immediately made treasurer of the club. In return he pays for two rounds of beer and schnaps and adds pea soup and pigs’ knuckles for everyone. Bodo’s club is politically democratic; but among the first tenors they have a conservative toy dealer and a half-communistic cobbler; one cannot be choosy in the matter of first tenors, there are so few of them. During the third round Willy announces that be knows a lady who can also sing first tenor and bass as well. The members of the society are silent, doubtfully chewing their pigs’ knuckles. Georg and I take a hand and explain Renée de la Tour’s accomplishments as duettist. Willy swears that she is not really a bass but by nature a pure tenor. There ensues a hugely enthusiastic response. Renée is elected to membership in absentia and is thereupon immediately made an honorary member. Willy pays for the necessary drinks. Bodo is dreaming of inserting mysterious soprano parts that will drive the rival sing clubs crazy at the yearly contest because they will think Bodo’s club contains a eunuch, especially since Renée will naturally have to appear in male attire since otherwise the club would be classified as a mixed choir. “I’ll tell her this very evening,” Willy announces. “Children, how she will laugh! In every key!”

Georg and I finally leave. Willy keeps watch over the square from the second-story window; like an old soldier he reckons on the possibility of an ambush by the guardians of the national anthem. But nothing happens. The market square lies peaceful under the stars. Around it the windows of the bars stand open. From Bodo’s meeting place come the melodious strains of “Wer hat dich, du schöner Wald, aufgebaut so hoch dort oben?”

“Tell me, Georg,” I ask as we turn into Hackenstrasse, “are you happy?”

Georg Kroll lifts his hat to an unseen presence in the night. “I’ll ask you another question,” he says. “How long can one sit on the point of a needle?”