The Black Obelisk

Chapter Four

We are sitting in the office waiting for Riesenfeld. For supper we had pea soup so thick a spoon would stand up in it; in addition, we ate the meat cooked in the soup—pigs’ feet, pigs’ ears, and a very fat piece of side meat for each of us. We need the fat to coat our stomachs against alcohol; we must not on any account get drunk before Riesenfeld does. And so Frau Kroll has done the cooking for us herself and as dessert has forced on us a helping of fat Dutch cheese. The future of the firm is at stake. We must wring a shipment of granite out of Riesenfeld even if we have to crawl home in front of him on our hands and knees to do it. Marble, shell lime, and sandstone we still have, but we are in bitter need of granite, the caviar of sorrow.

Heinrich Kroll has been removed from the scene. Wilke, the coffinmaker, has done us this service. We gave him two bottles of schnaps and he invited Heinrich to a game of skat with free drinks before dinner. Heinrich was taken in; he can never resist getting something for nothing, and on such occasions he drinks as fast as he can; moreover, like every nationalist, he considers himself a very clearheaded drinker. In reality he can’t stand anything at all, and drink overtakes him suddenly. One moment he is ready to drive the Social Democratic party out of the Reichstag single-handed and the next he is snoring openmouthed, not even to be aroused by the command On your feet, forward march! This is particularly true when he has been drinking on an empty stomach, as we have arranged for him to do. Now he is innocently sleeping in Wilke’s workshop in an oak coffin, comfortably bedded down on wood shavings. In our concern about waking him, we did not carry him back to his own bed. Wilke is now in the ground-floor studio of our sculptor, Kurt Bach, playing dominoes with him, a game both love because it gives them so much time for thought. They are engaged in drinking up the bottle and a quarter of schnaps left over from Heinrich’s defeat and claimed by Wilke as an honorarium.

The shipment of granite we want to extract from Riesenfeld is something we cannot, of course, pay for in advance. We never have that much money at one time and it would be madness to try to accumulate it in the bank—it would melt away like snow in June. Therefore we want to give Riesenfeld a promissory note payable in three months. That means we want to pay practically nothing.

Naturally, Riesenfeld must not lose on the transaction. That shark in the ocean of human tears needs to make a profit like every honest businessman. And so on the day he receives the note from us he must take it to his bank or ours and have it discounted. The bank ascertains that both Riesenfeld and we are good for its face value, deducts a few per cent for discounting the note, and pays out the money. We pay back to Riesenfeld the amount of the bank’s commission. Thus, he receives full payment for the shipment just as though we had paid in advance. Nor does the bank lose. It immediately sends the note to the Reichsbank, which in turn pays just as the bank paid Riesenfeld. And there in the Reichsbank it remains until, on the expiration date, it is presented for payment. What it will be worth then is easy to imagine.

We have only known about all this since 1922. Before then we tried to transact business in the same way as Heinrich Kroll and almost went broke doing it. We had sold out almost our entire inventory and, to our amazement, had nothing to show for it except a worthless bank account and a few suitcases full of currency not even good enough to paper our walls with. We tried at first to sell and then buy again as quickly as possible—but the inflation easily overtook us. The lag before we got paid was too long; while we waited, the value of money fell so fast that even our most profitable sale turned into a loss. Only after we began to pay with promissory notes could we maintain our position. Even so, we are making no real profit now, but at least we can live. Since every enterprise in Germany is financed in this fashion, the Reichsbank naturally has to keep on printing unsecured currency and so the mark falls faster and faster. The government apparently doesn’t care; all it loses in this way is the national debt. Those who are ruined are the people who cannot pay with notes, the people who have property they are forced to sell, small shopkeepers, day laborers, people with small incomes who see their private savings and their bank accounts melting away, and government officials and employees who have to survive on salaries that no longer allow them to buy so much as a new pair of shoes. The ones who profit are the exchange kings, the profiteers, the foreigners who buy what they like with a few dollars, kronen, or zlotys, and the big entrepreneurs, the manufacturers, and the speculators on the exchange whose property and stocks increase without limit. For them practically everything is free. It is the great sellout of thrift, honest effort, and respectability. The vultures flock from all sides, and the only ones who come out on top are those who accumulate debts. The debts disappear of themselves.

It was Riesenfeld who at the last instant instructed us in these matters and turned us into small-time participants in the great sellout. He accepted our first ninety-day note, although at the time we were by no means good for the sum on the face of it. But the Odenwald Granite Works was, and that was enough.

Naturally we were grateful. We tried to entertain him like an Indian rajah when he came to Werdenbrück—that is, insofar as an Indian rajah could be entertained in Werdenbrück. Kurt Bach, our sculptor, made a colorful portrait of Riesenfeld which we solemnly presented to him. Unfortunately, he did not like it. It makes him look like a country preacher, which is exactly what he does not want. He wants to look like a dark seducer and he assumes that that is the effect he makes—a remarkable example of self-deception, considering his pointed belly, and short, bandy legs. But who does not live by self-deception? I, with my innocuous, average talents, do I not cherish, especially at night, the dream of becoming a better man with ability enough to find a publisher. In these circumstances who is to throw the first stone at Riesenfeld’s parenthetical legs, especially when they, at a time like this, are clad in genuine English tweeds?

“What in the world are we going to do with him, Georg?” I ask. “This time we haven’t a single attraction! Riesenfeld won’t be satisfied with just getting drunk. He has too much imagination and too restless a character for that. He wants something he can see and hear, or, better yet, grab hold of. Our choice of women is hopeless. The few pretty ones we know haven’t the slightest desire to spend a whole evening listening to Riesenfeld in his role of Don Juan of 1923. Unfortunately, helpfulness and understanding are only to be found among the older and homely dames.”

Georg grins. “I don’t even know whether our cash will last out the night. When I got the stuff I made a mistake about the dollar rate; I thought it was still the same as at ten o’clock. When the twelve o’clock quotation was announced, it was too late.”

“On the other hand there’s been no change today.”

“There has at the Red Mill, my boy. On Sundays they’re two days ahead of the dollar rate there. God knows what a bottle of wine will cost tonight!”

“God doesn’t know either,” I say. “The proprietor himself doesn’t know. He only decides on the price when the electric light goes on. Why doesn’t Riesenfeld have a passion for the arts? That would be a lot cheaper. Admission to the museum still costs only two hundred and fifty marks. For that we could show him pictures and plaster heads for hours. Or music. There’s an organ concert at St. Catherine’s today—”

Georg chokes with laughter. “Well, all right,” I admit, “it’s absurd to picture Riesenfeld in such a setting; but why doesn’t he at least love operettas and light music? We could take him to the theater, and it would still be much less than that damn night club!”

“Here he comes,” Georg says. “Ask him.”

We open the door. Through the early spring evening Riesenfeld comes sailing up the steps. We see at once that the enchantment of spring twilight has had no effect on him. We greet him with false camaraderie. Riesenfeld notices it, squints at us, and drops into a chair. “Quit the play acting,” he growls in my direction.

“That’s just what I was going to do,” I reply. “It’s not easy for me. What you call play acting is known elsewhere as good manners.”

Riesenfeld grins briefly and evilly. “Good manners won’t get you far these days—”

“They won’t? Then what will?” I ask to draw him out.

“Cast-iron elbows and a rubber conscience.”

“But, Herr Riesenfeld,” Georg says reassuringly, “you yourself have the best manners in the world! Perhaps not the best in the bourgeois sense—but certainly the most elegant—”

“Really? There’s just a chance you might be mistaken!” Despite his disclaimer Riesenfeld is flattered.

“He has the manners of a robber,” I remark, exactly as Georg expects. We play this game without rehearsal, as though we knew it by heart, “Or rather those of a pirate. Unfortunately, they bring him success.”

Riesenfeld has recoiled a little at the word robber; the shot went too near home. But “pirate” reassures him. Exactly as intended. Georg gets a bottle of Roth schnaps out of the cupboard where the porcelain angels stand and pours. “What shall we drink to?” he asks.

Ordinarily people drink to health and success in business. With us it’s a bit difficult. Riesenfeld’s too sensitive a nature for that; he maintains that in the tombstone business such a toast is not only a paradox but the equivalent of wishing that as many people as possible may die. One might as well drink to cholera, war, and influenza. Since then we have left the toasts to him.

He stares at us sidewise, his glass in his hand, but does not speak. After a while he says suddenly in the half-darkness: “What actually is time?”

Georg puts his glass down in astonishment. “The pepper of life,” I reply. The old rascal can’t catch me so easily with his tricks. Not for nothing am I a member of the Werdenbrück Poets’ Club; we are used to big questions.

Riesenfeld disregards me. “What’s your opinion, Herr Kroll?” he asks.

“I’m a simple man,” Georg says. “Prost!”

“Time,” Riesenfeld continues doggedly. “Time, this uninterrupted flow—not our lousy time! Time, this gradual death.”

Now I, too, put down my glass. I think we’d better have some light,” I say. “What did you eat for dinner, Herr Riesenfeld?”

“Shut up, youngster, when grownups are talking,” Riesenfeld replies, and I notice that I have been inattentive for a moment. He did not intend to disconcert us—he means what he says. God knows what has happened to him this afternoon! I am tempted to reply that time is an important factor in the note we want him to accept—but content myself with my drink instead.

“I’m fifty-six now,” Riesenfeld says, “but I remember the time when I was twenty as though it were only a couple of years ago. What’s become of everything in between? What’s happened? Suddenly you wake up and find you’re old. What about you, Herr Kroll?”

“Much the same,” Georg replies. “I’m forty but I often feel sixty. In my case it was the war.”

He is lying to support Riesenfeld. “It’s different with me,” I explain. “Also because of the war. I went in when I was a little over seventeen. Now I am twenty-five; but I still feel like seventeen. Like seventeen and seventy. The War Department stole my youth.”

“With you it was not the war,” Riesenfeld replies. “You’re simply a case of arrested intellectual development. That would have happened to you if there’d never been a war. As a matter of fact, the war really made you precocious; without it you would still be at the twelve-year-old level.”

“Thanks,” I say. “What a compliment! At twelve everyone is a genius. He only loses his originality with the onset of sexual maturity, to which you, you granite Casanova, attribute such exaggerated importance. That’s a pretty monstrous compensation for loss of spiritual feedom.”

Georg fills our glasses again. We see that it is going to be a tough evening. We must get Riesenfeld out of the depths of cosmic melancholy, and neither one of us is especially keen on being involved in philosophical platitudes tonight. We should prefer to sit quietly under a chestnut tree and drink a bottle of Moselle instead of in the Red Mill commiserating with Riesenfeld over his lost youth.

“If you’re interested in the relativity of time,” I say, briefly hopeful, “then I can introduce you to a society where you can meet experts in that field—the Poets’ Club of this dear city. Hans Hungermann, the writer, has elucidated the problem in an unpublished sequence of sixty poems. We can go there right now; there’s a meeting every Sunday night with a social hour afterward.”

“Are there women there?”

“Naturally not. Women poets are like calculating horses. With the exception, of course, of Sappho’s pupils.”

“Well then, what’s the social hour?” Riesenfeld asks.

“It consists of running down other writers. Especially the successful ones.”

Riesenfeld grunts contemptuously. I am ready to give up. Suddenly the window in the horse butcher’s house across the street lights up like a brightly lit painting in a dark museum. Behind the curtains we see Lisa. She is just getting dressed and has nothing on except a brassiere and a pair of very short white silk panties.

Riesenfeld emits a snort like a ground hog. His cosmic melancholy has disappeared like’ magic. I get up to turn on the light. “No light!” he snaps. “Have you no feeling for poetry?”

He creeps to the window. Lisa begins to draw a tight dress over her head. She writhes like a serpent. Riesenfeld snorts aloud. “A seductive creature! Donnerwetter, what a rear end! A dream! Who is she?”

“Susanna in the bath,” I explain, trying to intimate delicately that at the moment we are in the role of the old goats watching her.

“Nonsense!” The voyeur with the Einstein complex never moves his eyes from the golden window. “I mean what’s her name.”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. This is the first time we’ve seen her. She wasn’t even living there at noon today,” I say to whet his interest.

“Really?” Lisa has got her dress on and is now smoothing it down with her hands. Behind Riesenfeld’s back Georg fills his glass and mine. We toss off the drinks. “A woman of breeding,” Riesenfeld says, continuing to cling to the window. “A lady, that’s easy to see. Probably French.”

As far as we know, Lisa comes from Bohemia. “It might be Mademoiselle de la Tour,” I reply. “I heard someone mention that name yesterday.”

“You see?” Riesenfeld turns around to us for an instant. “I told you she was French! One can tell right away—that je ne sais quoi! Don’t you think so too, Herr Kroll?”

“You’re the connoisseur, Herr Riesenfeld.”

The light in Lisa’s room goes off. Riesenfeld pours his drink down his time-parched throat and once more presses his face against the window. After a while Lisa appears at the door and goes down the steps into the street. Riesenfeld stares after her. “An enchanting walk! She does not mince; she takes long strides. A lithe, luscious panther! Women who mince are always a disappointment. But I give you my guarantee for that one.”

At the words “lithe, luscious panther” I have quickly downed another drink. Georg has sunk into his chair, grinning silently. We have turned the trick. Now Riesenfeld whirls around. His face shimmers like a pale moon. “Light, gentlemen! What are we waiting for? Forward into life!”

We follow him into the mild night. I stare at his froglike back. If only, I think enviously, it were as easy for me to bob up from my gray hours as it is for this quick-change artist.

The Red Mill is jam packed. All we can get is a table next to the orchestra. The music is too loud anyway, but at our table it is completely deafening. At first we shout our observations into one another’s ears; after that we content ourselves with signs like a trio of deaf mutes. The dance floor is so crowded that the dancers can hardly move. But that doesn’t matter to Riesenfeld. He spies a woman in white silk at the bar and rushes up to her. Proudly he propels her with his pointed belly across the dance floor. She is a head taller than he and stares in boredom at the balloon-hung ceiling. Lower down, Riesenfeld seethes and smolders like Vesuvius. His demon has seized him. “How would it be if we poured some brandy into his wine to make him tight quicker?” I ask Georg. “The boy is drinking like a spotted wild ass! This is our fifth bottle! In two hours we’ll be bankrupt if it goes on like this. I estimate we’ve already drunk up a couple of imitation marble tombstones. Here’s hoping he doesn’t bring that white ghost to our table so that we’ll have to quench her thirst too.” Georg shakes his head. “That’s a bar girl. She’ll have to go back.”

Riesenfeld returns. He is red in the face and sweating. “What does all this amount to compared to the magic of fantasy!” he roars at us through the confusion. “Tangible reality, well and good! But where’s the poetry? That window tonight against the dark sky—that was something to dream about! A woman like that, even if you never see her again, is something you’ll never forget. Understand what I mean?”

“Sure,” Georg shouts. “What you can’t get always seems better than what you have. That’s the origin of all human romanticism and idiocy. Prost, Riesenfeld!”

“I don’t mean it so coarsely,” Riesenfeld roars against the fox trot “Oh, if St. Peter Knew That.” “I mean it more delicately.”

“So do I,” Georg roars back. “I mean it even more delicately!” “All right! As delicately as you like!” The music rises to a mighty crescendo. The dance floor is a variegated sardine box. Suddenly I stiffen. Laced into the trappings of a monkey in fancy dress, my sweetheart Erna is pushing her way through the swaying mob to my right. She does not see me, but I recognize her red hair from afar. She is hanging shamelessly on the shoulder of a typical young profiteer. I sit there motionless, but I feel as though I had swallowed a hand grenade. There she is dancing, the little beast to whom ten of the poems in my unpublished collection “Dust and Starlight” are dedicated, the girl who has been pretending for a week that she is not allowed out of the house because of a mild case of concussion. She says she fell in the dark. Fell indeed, but into the arms of this young man in the double-breasted tuxedo, with a seal ring on the paw with which he is supporting the small of Erna’s back. A fine case of concussion! And I, imbecile that I am, sent her just this afternoon a bunch of rose-colored tulips from our garden with a poem in three stanzas entitled “Pan’s May Devotions.” Suppose she read it aloud to this profiteer! I can see the two doubled up with laughter.

“What’s the matter with you?” Riesenfeld roars. “Are you sick?”

“Hot!” I roar back and feel sweat running down my back. I am furious; if Erna turns around she will see me perspiring and red in the face—when more than anything I should like to appear superior and cool and at my ease like a man of the world. Quickly I wipe my face with my handkerchief. Riesenfeld grims unsympathetically. Georg notices this. “You’re sweating quite a bit yourself, Riesenfeld,” he says.

“That’s different! This sweat comes from the joy of life!” Riesenfeld roars.

“It’s the sweat of fleeting time,” I snarl maliciously and feel the salt water trickling into the corners of my mouth.

Erna is near us now. She is staring out over the orchestra in vacant happiness. I give my face a mildly reproachful, superior, and smiling expression while the sweat wilts my collar. “What’s the matter with you anyway?” Riesenfeld shouts. “You look like a moon-struck kangaroo!”

I ignore him. Erna has finally turned around. I look toward the dancers, examining them coolly until at last, with an expression of surprise, I pretend accidentally to recognize her. Casually I lift two fingers in greeting. “He is meschugge,” Riesenfeld howls through the syncopation of the fox trot “Himmelsvater.”

I do not reply. I am literally speechless. Erna has not seen me at all.

Finally the music stops. Slowly the dance floor empties. Erna disappears into a booth. “Were you seventeen or seventy just now?” Riesenfeld howls.

Since at this moment the orchestra is silent, his question thunders through the room. A couple of dozen heads turn to look at us, and even Riesenfeld is startled. I want to creep quickly under the table; but then it occurs to me that the people around us may have taken the question for a business offer and I reply coldly and loudly: “Seventy-one dollars apiece and not a cent less.”

My reply awakens immediate interest. “What’s the merchandise?” asks a man with a child’s face at the next table. “Perhaps I’ll get into the act. I’m always interested in good items. Cash, of course. Aufstein is the name.”

“Felix Koks,” I complete the introduction, happy to be able to pull myself together. “The items were twenty bottles of perfume. Unfortunately, the gentleman over there has just bought them.”

“Sh—” whispers an artifical blonde.

The entertainment has begun. A master of ceremonies is talking nonsense and is furious because nobody likes his jokes. I pull my chair back and disappear behind Aufstein; masters of ceremonies, bent on attacking the audience, always love to pick on me, and tonight that would be bad because of Erna.

Everything goes fine. The master of ceremonies disappears in disgust, and who should suddenly appear in a white bridal dress and veil but Renée de la Tour. Relieved, I pull my chair back and wonder how I can use my acquaintance with Renée to impress Erna.

Renée begins her duet. Docilely and modestly she trills a few verses in a high, maidenly soprano—then comes the bass and makes an immediate sensation. “How do you like the lady?” I ask Riesenfeld.

“Lady?”

“Would you like to meet her? Mademoiselle de la Tour.”

Riesenfeld is taken aback. “La Tour? Are you going to pretend that this absurd freak of nature is the enchantress in the window opposite you?”

That’s just what I am about to pretend, in order to see how he reacts, when I notice a sort of angelic glow hovering about his elephantine snout. Without a word he gestures toward the entrance with his thumb. “There—over there—there she is! That walk! You recognize it instantly!”

He is right. Lisa has entered. She is in the company of two middle-aged playboys and is behaving like a lady of the most cultivated society, at least according to Riesenfeld’s conceptions. She hardly seems to breathe and listens to her cavaliers with haughty distraction. “Am I right?” Riesenfeld asks. “You recognize women instantly by their walk, don’t you?”

“Yes. Women and policemen,” Georg says grinning; but he, too, looks appreciatively at Lisa.

The second number begins. A girl acrobat stands on the dance floor. She is young, with an impudent face, short nose, and beautiful legs. She does an adagio with somersaults, handstands, and leaps. We go on watching Lisa. She apparently wants to leave the place again. That, of course, is pretense; there’s only this one night club in the city; the rest are cafes, restaurants, or dives. That’s why one meets everyone here who has enough cash to get in.

“Champagne!” roars Riesenfeld in a dictator’s voice.

I am alarmed; Georg, too, is worried. “Herr Riesenfeld,” I say, “the champagne here is very bad.”

At that moment a face looks at me from the floor. I look back in amazement and see that it is the dancer, who has bent over backward so far that her head protrudes from between her legs. For a second she looks like an extremely deformed dwarf. “I’m ordering the champagne!” Riesenfeld exclaims, motioning to the waiter.

Georg winks at me. He plays the role of cavalier, while I’m there to look after awkward situations; that’s the arrangement between us. “If you want champagne, you shall have it,” he says now. “But of course you’re our guest, Riesenfeld.”

“Impossible! I’m taking care of this! Not another word!” Riesenfeld is now the complete Don Juan of the upper classes. He looks with satisfaction at the golden neck in the ice bucket. Various ladies immediately exhibit a strong interest. I, too, feel gratified. The champagne will show Erna that she threw me overboard too soon. With satisfaction I drink to Riesenfeld, who responds formally.

Willy turns up. That was to be expected; he is a regular patron of the place. Aufstein and his friends leave, and Willy sits down at the table next to ours. Almost immediately he gets up to greet Renée de la Tour. With her is a pretty girl in a black evening dress. After a while I recognize her as the acrobat. Willy introduces us. Her name is Gerda Schneider. She throws an appraising glance at the champagne and at us three. We watch to see whether Riesenfeld will catch fire; then we’d be rid of him for the evening. But Riesenfeld is committed to Lisa. “Do you think I could invite her to dance?” he asks Georg.

“I wouldn’t advise you to just now,” Georg replies diplomatically. “But perhaps we’ll meet her later in the evening.”

He looks at me reproachfully. If I had not said in the office that we did not know Lisa, everything would be simple. But who could have guessed Riesenfeld would turn romantic? Now it is too late to explain. Romantics have no sense of humor.

“Don’t you dance?” the acrobat asks me.

“Badly. I have no sense of rhythm.”

“Nor have I. Let’s try it together.”

We wedge our way into the mass on the dance floor and are slowly pushed forward. “Three men without women in a night club,” Gerda says. “Why?”

“Why not? My friend Georg maintains that anyone who takes a woman into a night club is inviting her to put horns on his head.”

“Who is your friend Georg? The one with the big nose?”

“The one with the bald head. He is a believer in the harem system. Women should not be exhibited, he says.”

“Of course,” Gerda replies. “And you?”

“I haven’t any system. I’m just chaff in the wind.”

“Don’t step on my feet,” Gerda says. “You’re not chaff at all. You weigh at least one fifty.”

I pull myself together. We are just being pushed past Erna’s table, and this time, thank God, she recognizes me although her head is resting on the shoulder of the profiteer with the seal ring and his arm is around her waist. How can I watch at such a moment? I smile sweetly down at Gerda and pull her closer to me, keeping an eye on Erna the while.

Gerda smells of lily of the valley. “Oh, let go of me!” she says. “This won’t get you anywhere with that redhead. That’s what you’re trying for, isn’t it?”

“No,” I lie.

“You oughtn’t to have noticed her at all. But you had to keep on staring over at her and then you suddenly start this ridiculous comedy with me. What a beginner you are!”

I still try to keep the false smile on my face; the last thing I want is for Erna to notice what’s going on. “I didn’t arrange this,” I say lamely. “I didn’t want to dance.”

Gerda pushes me away. “Evidently you’re a cavalier as well. Let’s stop. My feet hurt.”

I wonder whether to explain that I did not mean it that way; but who knows what would come of it? Instead I keep my mouth shut and follow her back to the table, head high, but plunged in shame....

Meanwhile, the alcohol has taken effect. Georg and Riesenfeld are calling each other du. Riesenfeld’s first name is Alex. In another hour at most he will invite me, too, to call him du. Tomorrow morning, of course, it will all be forgotten.

I sit there rather dejected, waiting for Riesenfeld to get tired. The dancers drift past, borne by the music on a lazy current of noise, bodily proximity, and herd instinct. Erna, too, comes by, provocatively ignoring me. Gerda jabs me in the ribs. “Her hair is dyed,” she says, and I have the sickening feeling that she is trying to comfort me.

I nod and become aware that I have had enough to drink. Finally Riesenfeld shouts for the waiter. Lisa has left; now he wants to go too.

It takes a while before we are finished. Riesenfeld actually pays for the champagne; I’d expected that we would be stuck with the four bottles he has ordered. We say good-by to Willy, Renée de la Tour, and Gerda Schneider. The place is closing anyway; the musicians are putting away their instruments. Everyone crowds around the exit and the hat-check counter.

Suddenly I am standing beside Ema. Her cavalier, at the hat-check counter, is wrestling with his long arms to get her coat. Erna measures me icily. “I would catch you here! That’s something you probably didn’t expect!”

“You catch me?” I say, taken aback. “I’ve caught you!”

“And in what company!” she goes on as though I had not spoken. “With dance-hall girls! Don’t touch me! Who knows what you’ve caught already!”

I have made no move to touch her. “I’m here on business.” I say. “And you? How do you come to be here?”

“On business!” she laughs cuttingly. “Business here? Who’s dead?”

“The backbone of the state, the man with small savings,” I reply, considering myself witty. “He gets buried daily, but his memorial is not a cross—it’s a mausoleum called the Stock Exchange.”

“To think that I trusted such a worthless loafer!” she says as though I had made no reply. “It’s all over between us, Herr Bodmer!”

Georg and Riesenfeld are at the counter fighting for their hats. I realize that I have been tricked into defending myself. “Listen,” I hiss. “Who told me this very afternoon that she could not go out because she had a raging headache? And who is hopping around here with a fat profiteer?”

Erna gets white around the nose. “Vulgar poetaster!” she whispers as though spewing vitriol. “You probably think you’re superior because you can copy dead men’s poems, don’t you? Why don’t you learn instead to make enough money to take a lady out in proper style! You with your walks in the country! To the silken banners of May! Don’t make me sob with pity!”

The silken banners are from the poem I sent her this afternoon. I reel inwardly; outwardly I grin. “Let’s stick to the subject,” I say. “Who is leaving here with two honest businessmen? And who with a cavalier?”

Erna looks at me big-eyed. “You expect me to go out on the streets at night by myself like a bar whore? What do you take me for? Do you think I intend to allow myself to be accosted by any loafer? What are you thinking of anyway?”

“You oughtn’t to have come here at all in the first place!”

“Indeed? Just listen to that! Giving orders already! Forbidden to leave the house while the gentleman goes gallivanting! Any more commands? Shall I darn your socks?” She laughs cuttingly. “The gentleman drinks champagne, but seltzer and beer were good enough for me, or a cheap wine of no vintage!”

“I didn’t order the champagne! That was Riesenfeld!”

“Of course! Always the innocent, you miserable failure of a schoolteacher. Why are you still standing here? I’ll have nothing more to do with you! Stop molesting me!”

I can hardly speak for rage. Georg comes up and hands me my hat. Erna’s profiteer also appears. They go off together. “Did you hear?” I ask Georg.

“Part of it. Why are you fighting with a woman?”

“I didn’t intend to get into a fight.”

Georg laughs. He is never entirely drunk, even after pouring it down by the bucket. “Never let them get you into it. You always lose. Why do you want to be right?”

“Yes,” I say. “Why? Probably because I’m a son of the German soil. Don’t you ever get into arguments with women?”

“Of course. But that doesn’t keep me from giving good advice to my friends.”

The cool air hits Riesenfeld like a hammer tap. “Let’s call each other du,” he says to me. “After all, we’re brothers. Exploiters of death.” His laugh is like the barking of a fox. “My name is Alex.”

“Rolf,” I reply. I wouldn’t dream of using my real first name for this drunken, one-night brotherhood. Rolf is good enough for Alex.

“Rolf?” Riesenfeld says. “What a silly name! Have you always had it?”

“Since my military service I’ve had the right to use it on leap years. Besides, Alex is nothing special.”

Riesenfeld staggers a bit. “It doesn’t matter,” he says generously. “Children, it’s been a long time since I’ve felt so fine! Could we get some coffee at your place?”

“Of course,” Georg says. “Rolf is a first-class coffee cook.”

We wobble through the shadows of St. Mary’s to Hacken-strasse. In front of us paces a lonely wanderer with a storklike gait. He turns in at our gateway. It is Sergeant Major Knopf, just returning from his tour of inspection of the inns. We follow him and catch up just as he is urinating against the black obelisk beside the door. “Herr Knopf,” I say, “that’s improper conduct!”

“At ease,” Knopf mutters, without turning his head.

“Sergeant Major,” I repeat, “that’s improper conduct! It’s disgusting! Why don’t you do it in your own house?”

He turns his head briefly. “You want me to piss in my parlor? Are you crazy?”

“Not in your parlor! You have a perfectly good toilet in your house. Use it! It’s only about ten yards from here.”

“Drivel!” Knopf replies.

“You’re soiling the trade-mark of our firm. Besides, you’re committing sacrilege. That’s a tombstone. A holy object.”

“Not till it’s put in the cemetery,” Knopf says and stalks off to the door of his house. “Good night to all of you, gentlemen.”

He makes a half-bow at random, striking his forehead against the doorpost. Growling, he disappears. “Who was that?” Riesenfeld asks me, while I look for the coffee.

“Your opposite. An abstract drinker. He drinks without imagination. He needs no help at all from outside. No wishful fantasies.”

“That’s something too!” Riesenfeld takes his place at the window. “Just a hogshead for alcohol then. Man lives by dreams. Haven’t you found that out yet?”

“No. I’m too young.”

“You’re not too young. You’re just a product of the war—emotionally immature and with too much experience in murder.”

“Merci,” I say. “How’s the coffee?”

Apparently the fumes have cleared. We are now back to formal terms of address. “Do you think the lady over there is already home?” Riesenfeld asks Georg.

“Probably. It’s all dark.”

“That could be because she hasn’t come back yet. We can wait a few minutes, can’t we?”

“Of course.”

“Perhaps we can get our business out of the way in the meantime,” I say. “All that’s needed is a signature to the contract. Meanwhile I’ll get some fresh coffee from the kitchen.”

I go out, giving Georg time to work on Riesenfeld. This sort of thing goes better without witnesses. I sit down on the steps outside. From Wilke’s carpenter shop come peaceful snores. Heinrich Kroll must still be there, for Wilke lives elsewhere. The national businessman will get a fine shock when he wakes up in a coffin. I debate whether to wake him up, but I’m too tired and it’s already getting light—let the shock serve that fearless warrior as an icy bath to strengthen him and reveal to him the end result and aim of any war. I look at my watch, waiting for Georg’s signal, and then stare into the garden. Morning is rising silently from the blossoming trees as though from a soft bed. In the lighted second-story window of the house opposite stands Sergeant Major Knopf in his nightgown taking a last gulp from the bottle. The cat rubs against my legs. Thank God, I say to myself, Sunday is over.