The Black Obelisk

Chapter Eleven

Rain pours from the sky. Mist streams up from the garden to meet it. The summer is drowned, it is cold, and the dollar stands at a hundred and twenty thousand marks. With a mighty crash a section of our gutter breaks from the roof and falls; water shoots across the window like a wall of gray glass. I sell two angels of bisquit porcelain and a wreath of immortelles to a frail woman whose two children have died of grippe. Georg lies in the next room coughing. He, too, has grippe, but I have fixed a mug of mulled wine for him. Besides, he has a half-dozen magazines lying around and is making use of this chance to inform himself about the latest marriages, divorces, and scandals in the great world of Cannes, Berlin, London, and Paris. The indefatigable Heinrich Kroll comes in wearing striped trousers, bicycle clips, and an appropriate dark raincoat. “Would you mind if I dictated a few orders?” he asks with incomparable sarcasm.

“By no means. Go right ahead.”

He gives me the commissions. They are for small tombstones of red granite, a marble plaque, a couple of grave enclosures—the commonplaces of death, nothing special. Then he stands for a time, irresolute, warming his backside at the cold oven, looking at the collection of rock samples that for the past twenty years has been lying on the shelves of the office, and finally bursts into speech. “If difficulties like this are going to be put in my way, it wont be long before we’re broke!”

I say nothing, just to annoy him. “Broke, I say,” he explains. “And I know what I’m talking about.”

“Really?” I look at him encouragingly. “Then why defend yourself? Everyone believes you.”

“Defend myself? I don’t need to defend myself! But what happened in Wüstringen—”

“Have they found the murderer?”

“Murderer? What’s that to us? Why talk about murder in a case like that? It was an accident. The man has only himself to blame! What I’m talking about is the way you treated Mayor Döbbeling! And on top of that to offer the carpenter’s widow a tombstone gratis!”

I turn toward the window and gaze into the rain. Heinrich Kroll is one of those people who never have any doubt about their own views—this makes them not only tiresome but dangerous as well. They are the bronze core of our beloved fatherland that makes it possible to keep on starting wars again and again. They are incapable of learning; they are born with their hands at the seams of their trousers and are proud to die that way too. I don’t know whether the type exists in other countries—but surely not in such numbers.

After a while I listen again to what the little muttonhead is saying. It seems that he has had a long interview with the mayor and has cleared the matter up. Thanks solely to his personality, we are once more permitted to sell tombstones in Wüstringen.

“And what are we supposed to do now?” I ask him. “Worship you?”

He throws me a venomous glance. “Look out, you’ll go too far someday?”

“How far?”

“Too far. Don’t forget you’re an employee here.”

“I forget it all the time. Otherwise you’d have to give me a triple salary—as draftsman, office manager, and advertising manager. Moreover, we are not on a military footing or you’d have to stand at attention in front of me. But if you like I can always give our competitors a ring—Hollmann and Klotz would take me on instantly.”

The door opens and Georg appears in bright red pajamas. “Were you talking about Wüstringen, Heinrich?”

“About what else?”

“Then go down to the cellar and stand in the corner. A man was killed in Wüstringen! A life was ended. Someone’s world was destroyed. Every murder, every killing, is the first killing in the world. Cain and Abel repeated again and again! If you and your fellows could only understand that, there’d be fewer battle cries on this otherwise blessed earth!”

“There would be servants and slaves, groveling before the inhuman Treaty of Versailles!”

“The Treaty of Versailles! Of course!” Georg takes a step forward. The smell of mulled wine is strong around him. “If we had won the war, then of course we would have deluged our enemies with love and gifts, wouldn’t we? Have you forgotten what you and your friends wanted to annex? The Ukraine, Brie, Longwy, and the whole iron and coal basin of France? Has the Ruhr been taken away from us? No, we still have it! Are you going to maintain that our treaty of peace would not have been ten times harsher if we had been in a position to dictate one? Didn’t I myself hear you jabbering about it as recently as 1917? France was to be reduced to a third-rate power, huge slices of Russia were to be annexed, and all enemies were to pay in goods and treasure until they were bled white! That was you, Heinrich! But now you join in the chorus roaring against the injustice that has been done us. Your self-pity and your cries for vengeance are enough to make one sick! Always someone else is to blame, not you. You stink of self-righteousness, you Pharisees! Don’t you know that the first mark of a man is that he stands for what he has done? But with you and your fellows it is always some tremendous injustice that has befallen you, and the only difference between you and God is that God knows everything but you know everything better.”

Georg glances about as though waking up. His face is now as red as his pajamas and even his bald head is rosy. Heinrich has recoiled in alarm. Georg follows him. He is furious. Heinrich retreats farther. “Don’t come near me!” he screams. “You’re blowing your germs right in my face! What would happen if we both had grippe?”

“Then no one would dare die,” I say.

The battling brothers make a fine picture. Georg in red satin pajamas, sweating with rage, and Heinrich in his little morning suit, terrified of catching the grippe. There is another witness to the scene: Lisa in a print dressing gown decorated with sailing ships is leaning far out the window in spite of the weather. In Knopfs house the door is open. In front of it the rain hangs like a curtain of glass beads. It is so dark inside that the girls have turned on the light. It would be easy to take them for Wagner’s Rhine Maidens swimming there. Under a huge umbrella Wilke, the carpenter, wanders around the courtyard like a black mushroom. Heinrich Kroll disappears, literally pushed out of the office by Georg. “Be sure to gargle,” I shout after him. “Grippe is deadly to people of your consititution.”

Georg stands still and laughs. “What an idiot I am,” he says. “As though you could ever tell people like that anything!”

“Where did you get the pajamas?” I ask. “Have you joined the Communist party?”

Applause comes from across the street. Lisa is expressing her approval of Georg—a serious disloyalty toward Watzek, the loyal National Socialist and future director of the stockyards. Georg bows, his hand on his heart. “Get into bed, you clown,” I say. “You’ve turned into a fountain of sweat!”

“It’s healthy to sweat! Just look at the rain! The sky out there is sweating. And across the street that sample of life, in its open dressing gown, with white teeth and full of laughter! What are we doing here? Why don’t we explode like fireworks? If we really knew what life is, we would explode! Why am I selling tombstones? Why am I not a comet? Or the great roc, sailing over Hollywood and snatching the most delectable women out of their swimming pools? Why must we live in Werdenbrück and do battle in the Café Central instead of fitting out a caravan for Timbuktu and setting forth with mahogany-colored bearers into the spacious African morning? Why don’t we own a bordello in Yokohama? Answer me! It is important to know at once! Why aren’t we racing with purple fish in the red evenings of Tahiti? Answer me!”

He reaches for the bottle of schnaps. “Hold on!” I say. “There’s still wine. I’ll heat it up at once on the alcohol stove. No schnaps now! You’re feverish! Hot red wine with spices from the Indies and the Sunda Islands!”

“Fine! Heat it. But why aren’t we ourselves on the Islands of Hope, sleeping with women who smell of cinnamon and whose eyes turn white when we mate with them under the Southern Cross and cry out like parrots and like tigers? Answer me!”

The flame of the alcohol stove burns like the blue light of adventure in the semidarkness of the office. The rain roars like the sea. “We are on our way, Captain,” I say, taking a hefty swig of the whisky to catch up with Georg. “The caravel is just passing Santa Cruz, Lisbon, and the Gold Coast. The slaves of the Arabian Mohammed Ben Hassan Ben Watzek are staring out of their cabins and waving to us. Here is your hookah!”

I hand Georg a cigar out of the box kept for our best agents. He lights it and blows a couple of perfect smoke rings. His pajamas show dark wet spots. “On our way,” he says. “Why aren’t we there yet?”

“We are there. One is there always and everywhere. Time is a prejudice. That is the secret of life. People just don’t know it. They keep trying to arrive someplace!”

“Why don’t they know it?” Georg asks in commanding tones.

“Time, space and casuality are the veils of Maia which prevent open vision.”

“Why?”

“They are the whips God uses to keep us from becoming His equals. He drives us through a panorama of illusions and through the tragedy of duality.”

“What duality?”

“The I and the world. The duality of being and living. Object and subject are no longer one. Birth and death are the consequences. The chain rattles. Whoever breaks free of it also breaks free of birth and death. Let us try it, Rabbi Kroll!”

The wine steams, smelling of lemon and spice. I add sugar, and we drink. Applause comes from the cabin of the slave ship of Mohammed Ben Hassan Ben Jussuf Ben Watzek on the other side of the gulf. We bow and put down our glasses. “And so we are immortal?” Georg asks with sudden impatience.

“Only hypothetically,” I reply. “In theory—for immortal is the opposite of mortal, and therefore, unfortunately, already again half of a duality. Only when the veil of Maia has been entirely torn away does duality completely go by the board. Then one is home again, no more subject and object, but both in one, and all questions die.”

“That’s not enough!”

“What more is there?”

“Man is. Period.”

“That, too, is part of a pair: man is, man is not. Always a duality, Captain! We must transcend it!”

“How? The instant we open our mouths we have hold of part of another pair. That can’t go on! Are we to go through life dumb?”

“That’s the opposite of not-dumb.”

“Damn it! Another trap! What to do, Helmsman?”

I am silent and lift my glass. A red reflection gleams in the wine. I point to the rain and I lift a piece of granite from among the stone samples. Then I point to Lisa, to the reflection in the glass, the most transitory thing in the world, to the granite, the most enduring in the world, put the glass and the granite aside and close my eyes. For all this hocus-pocus, something like a shudder suddenly runs along my spine. Have we perhaps unwittingly caught the scent? Have we in our cups laid hold of the magic key? Suddenly where is the room? Is it rushing through the universe? Where is the world? Is it just now passing the Pleiades? And where is the red reflection of the heart? Is it Pole Star, axis, and center in one?

Frenetic applause from the other side of the street. I open my eyes. For a moment there is no perspective. Everything is flat and far and near and round at the same time and has no name. Then it whirls back into place and stands still and is once more what it has always been called. When did this happen to me before? It did once! I am perfectly sure of it, but I can’t remember when.

Lisa waves a bottle of crème de cacao out of the window. At that moment the bell on the door rings. We hastily wave to Lisa and close the window. Before Georg can disappear, the office door opens and Liebermann, the gravedigger at the municipal cemetery, comes in. With a single glance he takes in the alcohol stove, the mulled wine, and Georg’s pajamas. “Birthday?” he croaks.

“Grippe,” Georg replies.

“Congratulations!”

“Why congratulations?”

“Grippe brings business. I’ve noticed it out there. Considerable increase in deaths.”

“Herr Liebermann,” I say to the hearty octogenarian. “We’re not talking about business. Herr Kroll has a serious, cosmic attack of grippe, against which we are taking measures. Will you have a glass of the medicine?”

“I’m a schnaps drinker. Wine justs sobers me.”

“We have schnaps too.”

I pour him a tumblerful. He takes a good swallow, opens his knapsack and gets out four trout wrapped in big, green leaves. They smell of the river and rain and fish. “A gift,” Liebermann says.

The trout lie on the table, their eyes dull. Their gray-green skin is covered with red flecks. We stare at them. Softly and suddenly death has stolen into the room again where a moment ago immortality held sway—softly and silently, with the creatures’ reproach toward that murderer and omnivore, man, who talks of peace and love, cuts the throats of lambs and let fish gasp out their lives in order to have strength to go on talking about peace and love—not excepting Bodendiek, the man of God and fancier of red meat.

“A fine supper,” Liebermann says. “Especially for you, Herr Kroll. A light diet for the sick.”

I carry the dead fish into the kitchen and give them to Frau Kroll, who appraises them with the eye of an expert. “With fresh butter, boiled potatoes, and salad,” she announces.

I glance around. The kitchen is gleaming, pots and pans reflect the light, a kettle is hissing, and there is a good smell. Kitchens are always a comfort. The reproach disappears from the eyes of the trout. Instead of dead creatures they have suddenly become food, which can be prepared in various ways. It almost seems as though they had been hatched for that purpose. What traitors we are, I think, to our nobler feelings!

Liebermann has brought us a few addresses. The grippe is indeed taking its toll. People are dying because they have little resistance left. They were weakened to begin with by the food shortage during the war. I decide suddenly to look for another profession. I am tired of death. Georg has fetched his dressing gown. He sits there like a sweating Buddha. The dressing gown is of a poisonous green. At home Georg loves loud colors. Suddenly I know what it was that our former conversation reminded me of. It was something Isabelle said a while ago. I do not remember it exactly, but it had to do with the deceptiveness of thighs. But in our case was it really deception? Or were we for an instant one centimeter closer to God?

The Poets’ Den in the Hotel Walhalla is a small paneled room. A bust of Goethe stands on a bookshelf, and photographs and etchings of German classical and romantic writers, together with a few moderns, hang on the walls. This spot is the meeting place of the Poets’ Club and of the intellectual elite of the city. There is a gathering every week. Even the editor of the daily paper appears occasionally and is openly flattered and secretly hated depending on whether he has accepted or rejected some contribution. He pays no attention. Like a kindly uncle he drifts through the tobacco smoke, slandered, attacked, and venerated; on only one point is everyone in agreement about him: that he knows nothing about modern literature. According to him, after Theodor Storm, Eduard Morike, and Gottfried Keller the great wasteland begins.

A couple of provincial judges and pensioned officials, interested in literature, attend too; so do Arthur Bauer and some of his colleagues; the poets of the city come, of course, a few painters and musicians, and occasionally a guest from outside. At the moment, Arthur Bauer is being courted by that lickspittle Mathias Grand, who hopes that Arthur will print his seven-part “Book of Death.” Eduard Knobloch, founder of the club, appears. He throws a quick look around the room and brightens. Some of his critics and enemies are not there. To my amazement he sits down beside me. I had not expected that after the episode with the chicken. “How goes it?” he asked quite humanly and not in his dining-room voice.

“Brilliantly,” I say because I know that will irritate him.

“I am planning a new sonnet sequence,” he announces without further explanation. “I hope you have no objection.”

“Why should I? I hope they rhyme.”

I have the edge on Eduard because I have had two sonnets printed in the paper whereas he has only had two didactic poems. “It’s a cycle,” he says, to my astonishment slightly embarrassed. “The thing is this: I’d like to call it ‘Gerda.’”

“Call it whatever—” I interrupt myself. “Gerda, did you say? Why Gerda? Gerda Schneider?”

“Nonsense! Simply Gerda.”

I regard the fat giant suspiciously. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Eduard gives a false laugh. “Nothing. Only poetic license. The sonnets have something to do with the circus. Distantly, of course. As you know, it’s stimulating to the imagination if you can find—even theoretically—a concrete point of departure.”

“Stop talking nonsense,” I say. “What does this mean, you cheat?”

“Cheat?” Eduard replies with feigned indignation. “It would be fairer to call you that! Didn’t you act as though the lady were a singer like Willy’s disgusting friend?”

“Never. You just thought so.”

“Anyway,” Eduard announces, “the thing tormented me. I investigated and found out that you had lied. She’s not a singer at all.”

“Did I ever say she was?” Didn’t I tell you she was with the circus?”

“You did. But you used the truth to make me disbelieve you. And then you imitated the other lady.”

“How did you find out all this?”

“I met Mademoiselle Schneider accidentally on the street and asked her. One’s allowed to do that, I presume?”

“Supposing she tricked you?”

Suddenly Eduard has a smile of disgusting self-assurance on his baby face; he makes no reply. “Listen to me,” I say, alarmed and therefore very calm. “This lady is not to be won with sonnets.”

Eduard does not react to this. He continues to show the superiority of a poet who in addition to his poems owns a first-class restaurant. And I have seen that in this matter Gerda is vulnerable. “You scoundrel,” I exclaim in rage. “All this won’t do you any good. The lady is leaving in a couple, of days.”

“She is not leaving,” Eduard replies, showing his teeth for the first time since I have known him. “Her contract was renewed today.”

I stare at him. This clod knows more than I. “So you met her today?”

Eduard begins to stammer slightly. “Accidentally today—that was it! Just today.”

The lie is written plain on his fat cheeks. “So you instantly had the inspiration for the dedication?” I say. “Is that how you repay our months of faithful patronage? With the jab of a kitchen knife in the genitals, you dishwasher?”

“You can take your damned patronage and—”

“You’ve sent her the sonnets already, haven’t you, you impudent peacock?” I interrupt him. “Oh stop it, lies won’t help you! She’ll show them to me anyway, you maker of dirty beds!”

“What do you mean?”

“Your sonnets, you matricide! Didn’t I teach you how to write them? Nice thanks! Couldn’t you at least have had the decency to send her villanelles or odes? But no, my own weapons—well, Gerda will show me the stuff so I can translate it to her!”

“Why, that would be—” Eduard stutters, his self-confidence shaken for the first time.

“It would be nothing,” I reply. “Women do such things. As I know. But since I value you as a restaurant keeper, I will reveal something more; Gerda has a giant of a brother who keeps watch over the family honor. He has already crippled two of her admirers. And he is especially fond of beating up people with flat feet. That means you.”

“Nonsense,” Eduard says. Nevertheless, I see he has grown thoughtful. No matter how improbable an assertion is, if it is made with enough assurance it has an effect. That’s something I learned from Watzek’s political idol....

The poet Hans Hungermann comes up to the sofa where we are sitting. He is the author of the unpublished volume of poetry “Wotan’s Death” and the dramas “Saul,” “Baldur,” and “Mohammed.” “How fairs art, my friends?” he asks. “Have you read the ordure that Otto Bambuss printed yesterday in the Tecklendorfer Kreisblatt? Buttermilk and phlegm! To think that Bauer publishes that slimy bastard!”

Otto Bambuss is the most successful poet in the city. We all envy him. He writes sentimental verses about picturesque nooks, country villages, street corners in the evening, and his own melancholy soul. He has had two thin volumes published by Arthur Bauer—one, indeed, is in a second printing. Hungermann, the stalwart writer of runes, hates him, but tries to exploit his connections. Mathias Grand despises him. I, on the other hand, am Otto’s intimate. He longs to visit a bordello sometime but does not dare. He thinks it would impart a mighty, full-blooded élan to his somewhat anemic verse. As soon as he sees me he comes up. I’ve heard that you know a circus lady! The circus, what a subject! Do you really know one?”

“No, Otto. Eduard has been boasting. The only one I know sold tickets to the circus three years ago.”

“Tickets—nevertheless, she was there! She must still have some of the atmosphere. The smell of carnivores, the ring. Couldn’t you introduce me to her sometime?”

Gerda really has a future in literature! I look at Bambuss. He is a tall, stringy fellow, pale, chinless, with an insignificant face adorned with spectacles. “She was in the flea circus,” I say.

“Too bad!” He takes a step backward in disillusionment. Then he murmurs, “I must do something. I know what I lack—blood.”

“Otto,” I reply. “Couldn’t it be someone unconnected with the circus? Some simple bed rabbit?”

He shakes his narrow head. “That’s not so easy, Ludwig. I know all about love. Spiritual love, I mean. I need no more of that; I possess it. What I need is passion, wild, brutal passion. Ravening, purple forgetfulness. Delirium!”

He is practically gnashing his tiny teeth. He is a teacher in a small village near the city, and of course he can’t find delirium there. Everyone there is interested in getting married or in marrying Otto to some honest girl with a good dowry and the ability to cook. But Otto doesn’t want that He believes that a poet must experience life. “The difficulty is that I can’t bring the two together,” he explains darkly. “Heavenly and earthly love. For me love immediately becomes soft, full of devotion, sacrifice, and kindness. The sex drive grows soft and domesticated. Every Saturday night, you understand, so you can get a good sleep Sunday. But what I need is pure sex, nothing else, something you can get your teeth into. Too bad. I heard that you knew a trapeze artist.”

I observe Bambuss with new interest. Heavenly and earthly love—he too! The sickness seems to be more widespread than I thought. Otto drinks a glass of Waldmeister lemonade and looks at me out of his pale eyes. Very likely he expects me to give up Gerda at once so that his heart may grow genitals. “When are we ever going to a bordello?” he asks sadly. “You did promise me, you know.”

“Soon. But that’s no purple sink of iniquity, Otto.”

“I only have two weeks more of vacation. Then I’ll have to go back to the village and it’s all over.”

“We’ll do it before that. Hungermann would like to go too. He needs it for his new drama ‘Casanova.’ We could make a joint expedition.”

“For God’s sake, I mustn’t be seen! Think of my profession!”

“For that very reason! An expedition is harmless. The crib has a couple of public rooms on the lower floor. Anyone can go there.”

“Of course we’ll go,” Hungermann says behind me. “All of us together. We’ll make an expedition of discovery. Purely scientific. Eduard wants to go along too.”

I turn toward Eduard with the intention of pouring a sauce of sarcasm over that superior sonnet cook—but it’s no longer necessary. Eduard suddenly looks as though he had seen a snake. A slim fellow has just tapped him on the shoulder. “Eduard, old comrade!” he says cordially. “How goes it? Rejoicing that you’re still alive, eh?”

Eduard stares at him. “Nowadays?” he says in a strangling voice.

He has blanched. His chubby cheeks suddenly sag, his shoulders droop, his lips, his hair, even his belly hang down. In the twinkling of an eye he has become a fat weeping willow.

The man who has caused all this is called Valentin Busch. Together with Georg and me he makes the third pest in Eduard’s existence, and more than that—he is pest, cholera, and paratyphus all in one. “You look blooming, my boy,” Valentin declares cheerfully.

Eduard laughs hollowly. “Appearances are deceptive. I’m consumed by cares, taxes, rents, and thieves—”

He is lying. Rents and taxes mean nothing in the inflation; you pay them after a year, that amounts to not paying at all.

The sums have long since lost all value. And the only thief Eduard knows is himself.

“At least there’s something to eat on your bones,” Valentin replies, smiling pitilessly. “That’s what the worms in Flanders thought when they scurried out to get you.”

Eduard squirms. “What’s it to be, Valentin?” he asks. “A beer? Beer is the best thing in this heat.”

“I don’t think it’s too warm. But the best is just good enough to celebrate the fact that you’re alive, you’re right there. Give me a bottle of Johannisberger Langenberg, from the Mumm estate, Eduard.”

“That’s sold out.”

“It is not sold out. I have Just inquired from your wine waiter. You have more than a hundred bottles left. What luck that it’s my favorite!”

I laugh. “What are you laughing at?” Eduard screams in rage. “You’re a fine one to laugh! Bloodsucker! You’re all bloodsuckers! You bleed me white! You, your bon vivant of a tombstone dealer friend, and you, Valentin! You bleed me white! A trio of parasites!”

Valentin winks at me and goes on solemnly, “So that’s your thanks, Eduard! And that’s the way you keep your word! If I had but known at that time—”

He rolls back his sleeve and stares at a long, jagged scar. In 1917 he saved Eduard’s life. Eduard, the K.P. noncom, had been transferred at that time and sent to the front. On one of his first days there a shot caught him in the calf of the leg while he was on patrol in no man’s land. Shortly after, he was hit again and was losing blood fast. Valentin found him, tied him up, and dragged him back to the trenches. In doing so he got a shell fragment in his arm. But he saved Eduard’s life, who otherwise would certainly have bled to death. Eduard, overflowing with gratitude, offered Valentin as reward the right to eat and drink whatever he liked in the Walhalla as long as he lived. Valentin, with his uninjured left hand, shook with Eduard in agreement. Georg Kroll and I were witnesses.

That all seemed harmless enough in 1917. Werdenbrück was far away, the war was near, and who knew whether Valentin and Eduard would ever return to the Walhalla? They did return; Valentin after being wounded twice more, Eduard round, fat, and reinstated as mess boss. At first Eduard was really grateful, and when Valentin came to visit him he occasionally even went so far as to serve flat German champagne. But the years began to wear on him. The trouble was, Valentin established in himself Werdenbrück. Formerly he had lived in another city; now he moved into a little room near the Walhalla and appeared punctually at Eduard’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The latter soon bitterly regretted his ill-considered promise. Valentin was a hearty eater, especially now that he had no more cares. Perhaps Eduard would have been able to console himself to some extent for the food; but Valentin drank too, and gradually he developed a connoisseurship in wine. Formerly he had drunk beer; now he drank only the finest vintages and thereby contributed to Eduard’s desperation far more than we did with our miserable coupons.

“Oh, all right,” Eduard says in despair as Valentin holds out the scar for his inspection. “But eating and drinking means drinking at meals, not between times. Drinking between meals is something I did not promise.”

“Just look at this miserable shopkeeper,” Valentin replies, nudging me. “In 1917 he didn’t think that way. Then it was: Valentin, dearest Valentin, rescue me and I’ll give you everything I have!”

“That’s not true! I never said that!” Eduard screams in falsetto.

“How do you know? You were half crazy with fear and half dead from loss of blood when I dragged you back.”

“I couldn’t have said that! Not that! Even if it had meant Instant death. It’s not in my character.”

“That’s right,” I say. “That skinflint would rather have died.”

“That’s what I mean,” Eduard explains, sighing with relief at finding aid. He wipes his forehead. His locks are wet from alarm at Valentin’s last threat. He is already picturing the Walhalla up for sale. “Very well, for this one time,” he says quickly so as not to be pushed further. “Waiter, a half-bottle of Moselle.”

“Johannisberger Langenberg, a whole bottle,” Valentin corrects him. And, turning to me, “May I invite you to have a glass?”

“And how!” I reply.

“Stop!!” Eduard says. “That was definitely not in the agreement! It was for Valentin alone! As it is, Ludwig costs me a lot of money every day, that bloodsucker with his worthless coupons!”

“Quiet, you prisoner,” I reply. “This is the working out of karma. You open fire on me with sonnets, and so I bathe my wounds in your Rhine wine. Would you like me to send a certain lady a twelve-line poem in the manner of Aretino about this situation, you defrauder of the man who saved your life?”

Eduard swallows the wrong way. “I need fresh air,” he mutters in a rage. “Extortioner! Pimp! Have you no sense of shame?”

“We save our shame for more serious matters, you harmless dealer in millions.” Valentin and I touch glasses. The wine is splendid.

“How about our visit to the house of sin?” Otto Bambuss asks, sideling up timidly.

“We’ll go without fail, Otto. We owe that much to art.”

“Why is it more fun to drink in the rain?” Valentin asks, refilling his glass. “It really ought to be the other way around.”

“Do you have to have an explanation for everything?” I say.

“Of course not. What would become of conversation then? It just occurred to me.”

“Perhaps it’s just herd instinct, Valentin. Liquids to liquids.”

“Maybe so. But I piss more too, on days when it’s raining. That at least is strange.”

“You piss more because you drink more. What’s strange about that?”

“You’re right.” Valentin nods in relief. “I’d never thought of it. Are there more wars, too, because more people are born?”