The Black Obelisk

Chapter Fifteen

“What a surprise,” I say, “and so early on a Sunday morning!”

I had imagined I heard a burglar groping around in the dawn twilight; but on coming downstairs, at five in the morning, I’ve found Riesenfeld, of the Odenwald Granite Works. “You must have made a mistake,” I say. “This is the Lord’s day. Not even the Stock Exchange works today. Still less we simple deniers of God. Where’s the fire? Or do you need money for the Red Mill?”

Riesenfeld shakes his head. “This is just a friendly visit Had a day to spare between Löhne and Hanover. Just arrived. Why go to a hotel at this hour? I can get coffee just as well here. How is the charming lady across the street? Does she get up early?”

“Aha!” I say. “So it was lust that drove you here! Congratulations on your youthfulness. But you’re out of luck. Sundays her husband is at home. An athlete and knifethrower.”

“I’m the world’s champion at knife throwing,” Riesenfeld replies, undisturbed. “Especially when I’ve had some country bacon and schnaps with my coffee.”

“Come on upstairs. My room’s untidy, but I can make coffee for you there. If you like, you can play the piano while the water’s boiling.”

Riesenfeld dismisses the idea. “I’ll stay here. This combination of midsummer, early morning, and tombstones pleases me. Makes me hungry and full of zest for life. Besides, the schnaps is here.”

“I have much better schnaps upstairs.”

“This is good enough for me.”

“All right, Herr Riesenfeld, just as you like!”

“Why are you shouting so?” Riesenfeld asks. “I haven’t grown deaf since you saw me.”

“It’s the joy of seeing you, Herr Riesenfeld,” I reply even louder, laughing noisily.

I can’t very well explain that I am trying to waken Georg by my shouting and alert him to what has happened. To the best of my knowledge, the butcher, Watzek, went off last evening to a meeting of the National Socialists, and Lisa has profited by the occasion to come over and, for once, spend the whole night in her lover’s arms. Without knowing it, Riesenfeld sits as guardian at the chamber door. The only way out for Lisa is through the window.

“All right then, I’ll bring the coffee down,” I say, running up the stairs. I take the Critique of Pure Reason, wrap a string around it, let it down through my window, and swing it back and forth in front of Georg’s window. Meanwhile, with a colored crayon I write a warning on a sheet of paper: “Riesenfeld in the office,” make a hole in the paper and let it flutter down the string and come to rest on the volume of Kant. Kant knocks a couple of times, then I see Georg’s bald head. He makes a sign to me. We carry on a short pantomime in which I make it clear to him in sign language that I can’t get rid of Riesenfeld. It’s impossible to throw him out: he is much too important for our daily bread.

I pull the Critique of Pure Reason up again and lower my bottle of schnaps. A beautifully molded arm seizes it before Georg can reach it and pulls it inside. Who knows when Riesenfeld will leave? Meanwhile, the lovers will be faced by the sharp pangs of morning hunger after a wakeful night. I lower my bread and butter and a piece of liverwurst.

The string comes back with a lipstick smear on the end. I hear a sighing sound as the cork is drawn from the bottle. Romeo and Juliet had been rescued for the time being.... I am serving Riesenfeld his coffee when I see Heinrich Kroll coming across the courtyard. That national businessman, in addition to his other repulsive qualities, is an early riser. He calls that opening his breast to God’s great outdoors. By God, of course, he understands not a kindly legendary figure with a long beard, but a Prussian field marshal.

He gives Riesenfeld a hearty handshake. Riesenfeld is not overjoyed. “I wouldn’t in the world keep you from anything,” he declares. “I’m just drinking my coffee here, and then I’ll doze a bit until it’s time for business.”

“Nothing could take me away from such a valued guest and one we see so seldom!” Heinrich turns to me. “Haven’t we any fresh rolls for Herr Riesenfeld?”

“We’ll have to ask the widow of the baker Niebuhr or your mother,” I reply. “Apparently no baking goes on in the republic on Sundays. Reprehensible slackness! It was different in imperial Germany.”

Heinrich shoots me an evil glance. “Where is Georg?” he asks abruptly.

“I am not your brother’s keeper, Herr Kroll!” I reply Biblically and loudly to let Georg know about this new danger.

“No, but you’re an employee of my firm! I must insist that you speak respectfully.”

“This is Sunday. Sundays I am not an employee. I came down at this hour of my own free will and out of love for my profession and a friendly regard for the manager of the Odenwald Granite Works. Unshaven, as perhaps you have noticed, Herr Kroll.”

“There you see,” Heinrich says bitterly to Riesenfeld. “That’s why we lost the war. Because of the slackness of the intellectuals and because of the Jews.”

“And the bicyclists,” Riesenfeld replies.

“What do you mean the bicyclists?” Heinrich asks in amazement.

“What do you mean the Jews?” Riesenfeld asks in return.

Heinrich is puzzled. “Oh, I see,” he says presently, displeased. “A joke. I’ll wake up Georg.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Herr Kroll,” I remark loudly.

“Kindly spare me your advice!”

Heinrich approaches the door. I do nothing to stop him. If Georg has not locked it, it must be because he is dead.

“Let him sleep,” Riesenfeld says. “I have no desire for serious conversation at this hour.”

Heinrich stops. “Why don’t you take Herr Riesenfeld for a walk to see God’s great outdoors?” I ask. “When you get back, the household will be up, eggs and bacon will be sputtering on the stove, rolls will have been baked especially for you, a vase of freshly picked gladioli will be here to relieve the dark paraphernalia of death, and Georg will be shaved and smelling of cologne.”

“God forbid,” Riesenfeld mutters. “I’ll stay here and sleep.”

I shrug my shoulders in perplexity. There’s nothing I can do to get him out of the room. “All right,” I say. “In the meantime, then, I’ll go and praise God.”

Riesenfeld yawns. “I had no idea people paid so much attention to religion here. You toss God’s name around like a pebble.”

“That’s our misfortune! We have all become too intimate with Him. Formerly God was the familiar of emperors, generals, and politicians. At that time we were not supposed to so much as mention His name. But I’m not going to pray. Just to play the organ. Come with me!”

Riesenfeld declines. Now there is nothing more I can do. Georg must help himself. All I can do is leave—then perhaps the others will go too. I’m not worried about Heinrich; Riesenfeld will know how to get rid of him.

The city is fresh with dew. I still have more than two hours before mass. Slowly I walk through the streets. It is an unfamiliar experience. The breeze is mild and as soft as though the dollar had fallen two hundred and fifty thousand marks yesterday instead of rising that much. For a time I stare at the peaceful river, then into the show window of Bock and Sons, producers of mustard which they package in miniature casks.

A slap on the shoulder wakes me up. Behind me stands a tall thin man with watery eyes. It is the town pest, Herbert Scherz. I look at him with distaste. “Shall I say good morning or good evening?” I ask. “Is this before or after your night’s rest?”

Herbert belches noisily. A stinging exhalation almost brings tears to my eyes. “All right, so it’s before your rest,” I say. “Aren’t you ashamed? What was the occasion? Gaiety, solemnity, irony, or just desperation?”

“A founders’ day,” Herbert says. “Yes, a founders’ day celebration,” he repeats complacently. “My induction into a club. I had to entertain the executive committee.” He looks at me for a while and then bursts out triumphantly: “The Veteran Riflemen’s Association! You understand?”

I understand. Herbert Scherz is a collector of clubs. Other people collect postage stamps or war mementos—Herbert collects clubs. He is already a member of more than a dozen—not because he needs so much entertainment but because he is passionately interested in death and in elegant funerals. It is his ambition to have, some day, the most stylish funeral in the city. Since he cannot leave enough money for that, and no one else would pay for it, he has hit on the idea of joining every possible club. He knows that when a member dies the club provides a ribboned wreath, and that’s his first goal. Besides, a delegation always follows the hearse with the club’s flag, and he counts on that likewise, He has figured that with his present memberships he is already sure of two cars full of wreaths, and that’s not by any means all. He is just sixty and his plenty of time to join more clubs. Of course he is a member of Bobo Ledderhose’s singing club, without ever having sung a note. He is an interested inactive member of it, just as he is of the Springerheil Chess Club, the All-Nine Bowling Club, and the Aquatic and Terrestrial Pterophyllum Scalare Club. I introduced him to the Aquatic Club because I thought he would give us an advance order for his tombstone in return. He did not So now he has managed to get into a riflemen’s club. “Were you ever a soldier?” I ask.

“What need? I am a member, that’s enough. A capital stroke, eh? When Schwarzkopf hears about it he’ll die of rage.”

Schwarzkopf is Herbert’s rival. Two years ago he found out about Herbert’s hobby and, as a joke, declared that he would make it a contest. Scherz took the joke so seriously that Schwarzkopf was delighted and actually joined a few clubs just to see Herbert’s reaction. Presently, however, he was caught in his own net, and now he, too, has become a collector—not so openly as Scherz, but secretly and roundabout—a kind of underhanded opponent, who gives Scherz a great deal of concern.

“It takes a lot to disturb Schwarzkopf,” I say to annoy Herbert.

“This will do it! This time it’s not just the wreath and the club flag—my fellow members will be in uniform—”

“Uniforms are forbidden,” I say mildly. “We lost the war, Herr Scherz, have you overlooked that fact? You should have joined the police club; they’re still allowed uniforms.”

I see Scherz making a mental note of the police idea, and I shall not be surprised if in a couple of months he appears as an inactive member of the Trusty Handcuff. At the moment he deals firmly with my skepticism. “Before I die uniforms will long since have been allowed again! Otherwise what would become of our national dignity? People can’t keep us slaves forever!”

I look at the swollen face with its burst veins. Strange how people’s ideas about slavery differ! The closest I ever came to slavery was as a recruit in uniform. “Besides,” I say, “when a civilian dies they won’t appear in dress uniform with helmets, sabers, and high boots. That’s only for those on active service.”

“For me too! It was specifically promised me last night! By the president himself!”

“Promised! What are promises when people have been drinking?”

Herbert appears not to have heard me. “Not only that,” he whispers in demoniac triumph. “In addition there will be the most important thing of all: the salvo over my grave!”

I laugh in his dissipated face. “A salvo? With what? Soda-water bottles? Firearms are forbidden in our beloved fatherland! The Treaty of Versailles, Herr Scherz. Your salvo is wishful thinking. Forget it!”

But Herbert is not to be dismayed. He shakes his head slyly. “You have no idea! We’ve had a secret army for a long time! A black Reichswehr.” He giggles. “I’ll get my salvo all right! In a couple of years we’ll have everything back again anyway. Universal military training and an army. How else are we to live?”

The wind brings the sharp smell of mustard around the corner, and suddenly the river below us throws a silver reflection across the street. The sun has risen. Scherz sneezes. “Schwarzkopf is finally beaten,” he says complacently. “The president has promised me he will never be admitted to the club.”

“He can Join an artillerymen’s club,” I reply. “Then a cannon will be fired over his grave.”

For a moment Scherz’s right eye quivers nervously. Then he dismisses the idea. “That’s a joke. There’s only one shooting club in the city. No, Schwarzkopf is done for. I’ll come by tomorrow and have a look at your monuments. Someday or other I’ll have to make up my mind.”

He has been making up his mind as long as I have been in the business. He is a perpetual Frau Niebuhr, wandering from us to Hollmann and Klotz, and from there to Steinmeyer, insisting on seeing everything, bargaining for hours, and buying nothing. We are used to such types; there are always people, mostly women, who derive a strange satisfaction from ordering their coffins, shrouds, cemetery lots, and monuments while they’re still alive—but Herbert has become a world’s champion at it. He finally bought his cemetery lot six months ago. It is sandy, high, dry, and has a nice view. Herbert will decay there somewhat more slowly and respectably than in the lower, moister parts of the cemetery, and he is proud of it. Every Sunday afternoon he goes out there with a Thermos of coffee, a folding stool, and a package of sugar cookies to enjoy quiet hours watching the ivy grow. But he still dangles the order for the monument in front of the snouts of the tombstone firms like a rider dangling a carrot in front of his donkey. We gallop after it but we never get it. Herbert cannot make up his mind. He is afraid he may miss some marvelous novelty, like an electric bell or a telephone in the coffin.

I look at him with distaste. He has paid me back for the cannon fast enough. “Haven’t you anything new?” he asks condescendingly.

“Nothing that would interest you—aside from—but that’s already as good as sold,” I say, with the sudden inspiration of anger and a quick stirring of my business instinct

Herbert bites. “What?”

“Nothing for you. Something absolutely magnificent. But as good as sold.”

“What is it?”

“A mausoleum. A very important work of art. Schwarzkopf is extremely interested—”

Scherz laughs. “I know that salesman’s trick. Try another.”

“No. Not with an object like this. Schwarzkopf wants to use it as a kind of post-mortem clubhouse. He is already thinking of making arrangements in his will for a small, intimate yearly gathering there on the anniversary of his death. Then it will be like a new funeral every year. The room in the mausoleum is perfect for it, with its benches and stained glass. After each celebration a small collation can be served. Hard to beat, isn’t it? A perpetual memorial service; no one will pay the slightest attention to the other graves!”

Scherz laughs again, but more thoughtfully. I let him laugh. Between vis the sun casts weightless bands of pale ,silver from the river. Scherz stops. “So, you have a mausoleum like that?” he says, with the slight concern of the true collector who fears that a great opportunity may be missed.

“Forget it! It is as good as sold to Schwarzkopf. Look at the ducks on the river instead! What colors!”

“I don’t like ducks. They taste too gamey. Well, I’ll be around sometime to look at your mausoleum.”

“Don’t hurry. You’d better see it in its proper setting, after Schwarzkopf has had it installed.”

Scherz laughs again, but this time rather hollowly. I laugh too. Neither of us believes the other, but each has swallowed the bait. He has swallowed Schwarzkopf, and I the possibility that this time I may catch him at last. The mausoleum is the one Frau Niebuhr ordered. She suddenly doesn’t want it any more and refuses to pay. Maybe Herbert will buy it now.

I walk on. From the Altstädter Hof comes the smell of tobacco and stale beer. I wander through the gateway into the back courtyard of the inn. It is a picture of peace. The casualties of Saturday night, dead to the world, are lying there in the early sunlight. Flies buzz about in the stertorous breath of the kirsch drinkers, Steinhäger drinkers, and corn drinkers as though in aromatic trade winds from the Spice Islands; above the sleeping faces spiders climb up and down like trapeze artists, webs suspended from the wild grapevine, and a beetle is exercising in the mustache of a gypsy as though in a bamboo grove. There it is, I think—at least in sleep—the lost paradise, universal brotherhood!

I look up at Gerda’s window. It is open.

“Help!” one of the figures on the ground murmurs suddenly. He says it calmly, softly, and with resignation—he does not shout, and it is just this that strikes me like an ethereal blow from some other-worldly creature. It is a weightless blow on the breast, which pierces me like an X ray, and yet robs me of breath. Help! I think. What else do we cry, audibly and inaudibly, all the time?

Mass is over. The Mother Superior gives me my honorarium. It is not worth keeping, but I cannot refuse it, for that would offend her. “1 have sent you a bottle of wine for breakfast,” she says. “We have nothing else to give you. But we pray for you.”

“Thank you,” I reply. “But how do you happen to have this excellent wine? It must be expensive.”

A smile spreads over the Mother Superior’s wrinkled, ivory-tinted face; she has the bloodless skin of those who live in cloisters, penitentiaries, and hospitals, and those who work in mines. “It’s given to us. There’s a devout wine dealer in the city. His wife was here for a long time. Now he sends us several cases each year.”

I do not pause to ask why he sends them. I have remembered that Bodendiek, that warrior of God, also has breakfast after mass, and I rush off to rescue some of the wine.

The bottle is, of course, already half empty. Wernicke is there too, but he is only drinking coffee. “The bottle, out of which you have so generously helped yourself,” I say to Bodendiek, “was sent to me personally by the Mother Superior as a part of my salary.”

“I know,” the vicar replies. “But aren’t you the apostle of tolerance, you cheerful atheist? Don’t begrudge your friends a drop or two. A whole bottle at breakfast would be very bad for you.”

I make no reply. The churchman takes this for weakness and instantly moves to the attack. “How’s your fear of life doing?” he asks, taking a hearty swallow.

“What?”

“The fear of life that oozes out of all your bones like—”

“Like ectoplasm,” Wernicke throws in helpfully.

“Like sweat,” says Bodendiek, who does not trust the man of science.

“If I were afraid of life, I would be a devout Catholic,” I answer, pulling the bottle toward me.

“Nonsense! If you were a devout Catholic, you would have no fear of life.”

“That is the famous hair-splitting of the Church fathers.”

Bodendiek laughs. “What do you know about the exquisite intellectuality of our Church fathers, you young barbarian?”

“Enough to have stopped reading when I came to their argument over whether Adam and Eve had navels. The fight lasted for years.”

Wernicke grins. Bodendiek makes a disgusted face. “Cheap ignorance, joining hands as usual with crass materialism,” he says to us both.

“You oughtn’t to be so contemptuous of science,” I reply. “What would you do if you had acute appendicitis and the only surgeon within reach was an atheist? Would you pray or let the heathen operate?”

“Both, you novice at dialectic; it would give the heathen an opportunity to gain merit in the sight of God.”

“You really oughtn’t to let a doctor treat you at all,” I say. “If it is God’s will, then you should just die and not try to change it.”

Bodendiek waves this aside. “Now we’ll soon come to the question of free will and the omnipotence of God. Ingenious sophomores think they can use that to refute the whole teaching of the Church.”

He gets up benevolently. His face is glowing with health. Wernicke and I look peaked by comparison with this blooming believer. “A benediction on our meal!” he says. “Now I must go to my other parishioners.”

No one comments on the word “other.” He rustles out. “Have you ever noticed that priests and generals usually attain a good old age?” I ask Wernicke. “The tooth of doubt and care does not gnaw at them. They are in the open air a great deal, hold their jobs for life, and are not obliged to think. The one has his catechism, the other his army manual. That keeps them young. Besides, both enjoy great respect. One is in God’s court, the other in the Kaiser’s.”

Wernicke lights a cigarette. “Have you noticed, too, what an advantage the vicar has in argument?” I ask. “We have to respect bis faith, he doesn’t have to respect our lack of it.”

Wernicke blows smoke at me. “He makes you angry—you don’t disturb him.”

“That’s it!” I say. “That’s what enrages me so!”

“He knows it. That’s what makes him so confident.”

I pour out the rest of the wine. My share has been a bare glass and a half—the rest was consumed by God’s warrior—a Foster Jesuitengarten 1915, a wine which should only be drunk in the evening in the company of a woman. “And you?” I ask.

“None of this touches me at all,” Wernicke says. “I’m a sort of traffic policeman of the soul. I try to keep order at this particular intersection—but I am not responsible for the traffic.”

“I continually feel myself responsible for everything in the world. Does that mean I’m a psychopath too?”

Wernicke bursts into insulting laughter. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But it’s not so simple! You’re completely uninteresting—a wholly normal run-of-the-mill adolescent!”

I come to Grossestrasse. A protest parade is slowly pushing its way toward me from the market place. Like sea gulls fluttering before a dark cloud, the brightly clad Sunday picnickers, with their children, lunch baskets, bicycles, and colorful knickknacks, scatter before it—then it is here and blocks the street.

It is a procession of war maimed, protesting against their inadequate pensions. First, on a little go-cart, comes the stump of a body with a head. Arms and legs are missing. It’s no longer possible to see whether the stump was once a tall man or a short man. That cannot be estimated even from the shoulders, because the arms were amputated so high up there was no place for prostheses. The man has a round head, lively brown eyes, and a mustache. Someone must look after him every day—he is shaven, his hair and mustache have been trimmed. The little cart, which is really only a board on rollers, is being pulled by a one-armed man. The amputee sits on it very straight and attentive. After him come the wheel chairs with the legless, three abreast. The chairs have rubber-tired wheels big enough to be moved by hand. The leather aprons that cover the space where legs should be, and are usually closed, are open today. The stumps can be seen. The trousers have been carefully folded over them.

Next come the amputees on crutches. These are the strangely distorted silhouettes one sees so often—the straight crutches, with the twisted bodies hanging between them. Then follow the blind and the one-eyed. You can hear the white canes tapping the pavement and see the yellow bands with three circles on their arms. The sightless are identified by the three black circles that mark one-way streets and blind alleys—and mean “Keep Out.” Many of the wounded carry placards with legends. Some of the blind do too, even though they cannot read them. “Is This the Gratitude of Our Fatherland?” one of them asks. “We Are Starving,” says another.

The man on the little wagon has a stick with a sign on it thrust into his jacket. The inscription reads: “My Month’s Pension Is Worth One Gold Mark.” Between two other carts flutters a white banner: “Our Children Have No Milk, No Meat, No Butter. Is This What We Fought For?”

These are the saddest victims of the inflation. Their pensions are so worthless practically nothing can be done with them. From time to time the government grants them an increase—much too late, for on the day the increase is granted, it is already far too low. The dollar has gone wild; it no longer leaps by thousands and ten thousands, but by hundreds of thousands daily. Day before yesterday it stood at 1,200,000, yesterday at 1,400,000. Tomorrow it is expected to reach two million—and by the end of the month ten. Workmen are given their pay twice a day now—in the morning and in the afternoon, with a recess of a half-hour each time so that they can rush out and buy things—for if they waited a few hours the value of their money would drop so far that their children would not get half enough food to feel satisfied. Satisfied—not nourished. Satisfied with anything that can be stuffed into their stomachs, not with what the body needs.

The procession is much slower than any other demonstration. Behind it the cars of the Sunday excursionists are piling up. It is a strange contrast—the gray, almost anonymous mass of the silent victims of war, dragging themselves along—and behind them the congested cars of the war profiteers, muttering and fuming with impatience on the heels of the war widows who, with their children, thin, hungry, woebegone, and careworn make up the end of the procession. In the cars are all the colors of summer in linen and silk—full cheeks, round arms, and round faces, the latter showing some embarrassment at being caught in so disagreeable a situation. The pedestrians on the sidewalks are better off; they simply look away, pulling their children, who would like to stay and ask questions about the maimed men. Everyone who can disappears into the side streets.

The sun is high and hot, and the wounded are beginning to sweat. It is the unhealthy, greasy sweat of the anemic that pours down their faces. Suddenly behind them there is the blast of a horn; someone has not been able to wait; he thinks he can gain a few minutes by driving past them, half on the sidewalk. All the wounded turn around. No one says a word, but they spread out and block the street. The car will have to run over them in order to pass. In it is a young man in a bright suit and straw hat, accompanied by a girl. He makes a few silly, embarrassed gestures and lights a cigarette. Each of the wounded men, as they go by, looks at him. Not in reproof—they are looking at the cigarette whose fragrant smoke drift across the street. It is a very good cigarette; none of the wounded can afford to smoke at all. And so they sniff up as much as they possibly can while they pass.

I follow the procession to St. Mary’s. There stand two National Socialists in uniform, with a big sign; “Come to Us, Comrades! Adolf Hitler Will Help You!” The procession moves around the church. Right and left the cars can now shoot by.

We are sitting in the Red Mill. A bottle of champagne stands in front of us. Its price is two million marks, more than the monthly pension of a legless man and his family. Reisenfeld has ordered it.

He is sitting where he can watch the whole dance floor. “I knew about her all along,” he remarks to me. “I just wanted to watch you try to trick me. Aristocratic ladies do not live across the street from small tombstone firms, and they do not live in houses like that!”

“That’s an astoundingly false conclusion for a man of the world like you,” I reply. “You should know that almost all aristocrats live exactly that way nowadays. The inflation has seen to it. The days of palaces are over, Herr Riesenfeld. And if anyone still has one, he is taking in boarders. Inherited money has disappeared. Imperial highnesses live in furnished rooms, saber-rattling colonels have become embittered insurance agents, countesses—”

“Enough!” Riesenfeld interrupts me. “You’re going to make me cry! Further explanations are unnecessary. But I knew about Frau Watzek from the beginning. It simply amused me to see your silly attempts to deceive me.”

He looks over at Lisa, who is dancing a fox trot with Georg. I forbear to remind the Odenwald Casanova that he classified Lisa as a Frenchwoman with the sinuous walk of a panther—it would result in the immediate breaking-off of our relationship, and we urgently need a shipment of granite.

“However, that doesn’t detract from the total effect in the slightest,” Riesenfeld explains conciliatingly. “On the contrary, it heightens one’s interest! These thoroughbreds produced by the common people! Just look at the way she dances! Like a—a—”

“A sinuous panther,” I help him out

Riesenfeld glances at me. “Sometimes you show some understanding of women,” he growls.

“Learned from you!”

He drinks to me, unsuspiciously flattered.

“There’s one thing I’d like to know about you,” I say. “I have a feeling that at home in Odenwald you’re a respectable citizen and family man—you have already shown me the photographs of your three children and your rose-covered house, in whose walls you used, out of principle, no granite at all, a fact which I as an unsuccessful poet hold greatly to your credit—why, when you are away, do you turn into such a night-club wolf?”

“In order to get greater pleasure at home out of being a citizen and family man,” Riesenfeld replies promptly.

“That’s a good reason. But why take the long way around?”

Riesenfeld grins. “It’s my demon. The double nature of man. Never heard of it, eh?”

“Haven’t I though? I am the living prototype.”

Riesenfeld laughs insultingly, just like Wernicke this morning. “You?”

“The same sort of thing exists on a somewhat more intellectual level,” I explain.

Riesenfeld takes a swallow and sighs. “Reality and imagination! Eternal youth and eternal discord! Or—” recovering himself he adds, ironically—”in your case, as a poet, natural yearning and fulfillment, God and the flesh, cosmos and locus—”

Fortunately the trumpets begin again. Georg comes back to the table with Lisa. She is a vision in apricot-colored crepe de Chine^ After Riesenfeld found out about her plebeian background, he demanded from us as restitution that we all be his guests at the Red Mill. Now he bows in front of Lisa. “A tango, gnädige Frau. Would you—” Lisa is a head taller than Riesenfeld and we expect an interesting performance. But to our amazement the Granite King proves himself a magnificent master of the tango. He is not only an adept in the Argentinian, but also in the Brazilian and apparently several other varieties. Like an expert skater he pirouettes around the dance floor with the disconcerted Lisa. “How are you feeling?” I ask Georg. “Don’t take it too hard. Mammon versus love! A short while ago I got several lessons in that subject myself. Even from you, piquantly enough. How did Lisa escape from your room this morning?”

“It was difficult. Riesenfeld wanted to take over the office as an observation post. He planned to keep his eye on her window. I thought I could scare him off by revealing to him who Lisa is. That did no good. He bore it like a man. Finally I succeeded in dragging him into the kitchen for a few minutes for coffee. That was the moment for Lisa. When Riesenfeld went back to spying from the office, she was smiling graciously at him out of her own window.”

“In the kimono with the storks?”

“In one with windmills.”

I look at him. He nods. “Traded for a small headstone. It was necessary. Anyway Riesenfeld, bowing and scraping, shouted an invitation for this evening.”

“He wouldn’t have dared to when she was still called ‘de la Tour.’”

“He did it respectfully. Lisa accepted because she thought it would help us in our business.”

“And you believe that?”

“Yes,” Georg replies happily.

Riesenfeld and Lisa come back from the dance floor. Riesenfeld is sweating. Lisa is as cool as an Easter lily. To my immense astonishment I suddenly see another figure appear among the toy balloons behind the bar. It is Otto Bambuss. He stands there, lost in confusion and about as incongruous as Bodendiek would be. Then Willy’s red head bobs up beside him, and from somewhere I *hear Renée de la Tour’s commanding tones: “Bodmer, at ease!”

I come to. “Otto,” I say to Bambuss, “what brought you here?”

“I did,” Willy answers. “I wanted to do something for German literature. Otto must soon return to his village. There he will have time to grind out poems about the sinfulness of the world. At the moment, however, it is his duty to observe.”

Otto smiles gently. His shortsighted eyes blink. Perspiration stands on his forehead. Willy sits down with him and Renée at the table next to ours. Between Lisa and Renée there has been a second-long, point-blank duel of eyes. Both turn back to their tables, unbeaten, confident, and smiling.

Otto leans over to me. “I have completed the ‘Tigress’ cycle,” he whispers. “Finished it last night. I’m already at work on a new series: ‘The Scarlet Woman.’ Or perhaps I’ll call it “The Great Beast of the Apocalypse’ and write it in free verse. It’s magnificent. The spirit has descended on me!”

“Good! But what do you expect to find here?”

“Everything,” Otto replies, beaming with happiness. “I always expect everything in a place where I’ve never been before. I hear you really do know a circus lady!”

“The ladies I know are not for beginners to practice on,” I say. “You don’t seem to know anything at all, you feebleminded camel, otherwise you wouldn’t behave like such a thickhead! So, pay attention to rule number one: hands off other people’s women—you haven’t the right physique for it.”

Otto coughs. “Aha,” he says then. “Bourgeois prejudice! I wasn’t talking about wives.”

“Neither was I, you simpleton. With wives the rules are not so strict. But why are you so sure that I know a circus lady? I have already told you she was a ticket seller in a flea circus.”

“Willy told me that wasn’t true. She is a circus acrobat.”

“So that’s it. Willy!” I see his red head bobbing above the dancers like a buoy on the ocean. “Listen to me, Otto,” I say. “It’s entirely the other way around. Willy’s girl is from the circus. The one with the blue hat. And she loves literature. So now’s your chance! Go to it!”

Bambuss looks at me distrustfully. “I’m talking honestly to you, you half-witted idealist!” I say.

Riesenfeld is dancing with Lisa again. “What’s wrong with us, Georg?” I ask. “Over there a business friend of yours is trying to cut you out with a woman, and now I have just been requested to lend Gerda in the interests of German poetry. Are we sheep, or are our ladies so desirable?”

“Both. Besides, someone else’s “woman is always five times as desirable as one that’s unattached. It’s an old moral law. But in a few minutes Lisa will come down with a bad headache. She will go out to the dressing room to get aspirin, and then she will send a waiter with the news that she has had to go home and that we are to go on having a good time.”

“A blow for Riesenfeld. Then he won’t sell us anything tomorrow.”

“He will sell us all the more. You ought to know that. For that very reason. Where is Gerda?”

“Her engagement doesn’t begin for three days. I hope she is in the Altstädter Hof. But I am afraid she’s in the Walhalla with Eduard. She calls that economizing on dinner. I can’t do much about it. She has such excellent reasons that I would have to be thirty years older to answer them. But you just keep your eye on Lisa. Perhaps she won’t get a headache after all and can help us in our business even more.”

Otto Bambuss leans over to me again. Behind his spectacles his eyes are those of a terrified herring. “Manège would be a good title for a volume of circus poems, wouldn’t it? With reproductions of pictures by Toulouse-Lautrec.”

“Why not by Rembrandt, Dürer, and Michelangelo?”

“Did they make circus drawings?” Otto asks, seriously interested.

I give him up. “Drink, my boy,” I say in fatherly tones. “And enjoy your brief life, for someday soon you will be murdered. Out of jealousy, you moon-calf!”

Flattered, he drinks to me and then looks thoughtfully over at Renée, whose kingfisher-blue hat is bobbing on her blond ringlets. She looks like an animal trainer on Sunday.

Lisa and Riesenfeld come back. “I don’t know what’s the matter,” Lisa says. “Suddenly I have a terrible headache. I’ll just go and get an aspirin—”

Before Riesenfeld can spring to his feet, she has left the table. Georg looks at me with abominable self-satisfaction and reaches for a cigar.