The Black Obelisk

Chapter Nine

“A mausoleum!” Frau Niebuhr says. “A mausoleum or nothing!”

“All right,” I reply. “Let it be a mausoleum.”

In the short time since Niebuhr’s death the timid little woman has changed remarkably. Now she is caustic, talkative, and quarrelsome and has really become pretty much of a pest. I have been dickering with her for two weeks about a memorial for the baker, and each day I think less harshly of the departed. Many people are brave and kind as long as things go badly with them and become intolerable when things improve, especially in our beloved fatherland; the most timid and obsequious recruits here often become the worst-tempered noncoms.

“You haven’t any on display,” Frau Niebuhr says pointedly.

“Mausoleums,” I explain, “are not put on display. They are made to order like the ball dresses of queens. We have a few drawings of them here and perhaps we’ll have to make one especially for you.”

“Of course! It must be something quite special. Otherwise I shall go to Hollmann and Klotz.”

“I hope you have been there already. We like our clients to visit the competition. In mausoleums quality is the thing of paramount importance.”

I know that she has been there long since. The traveler for Hollmann and Klotz, Weeping Oskar, has told me about it. We ran into him a short time ago and tried to bribe him away. He is still undecided, but we have offered him a higher percentage than Hollmann and Klotz pay, and to show us that he is well disposed during this period of reflection he is temporarily working for us as a spy. “Show me your drawings!” Frau Niebuhr commands like a duchess.

We have none, but I get out a few renderings of war memorials. They are effective, forty-five inches high, drawn with charcoal and colored chalk and embellished with appropriate backgrounds.

“A lion,” Frau Niebuhr says. “He was a lion! But a leaping lion, not a dying one. It must be a leaping lion.”

“How would a leaping horse do?” I ask. “A few years ago our sculptor won the Berlin-Teplitz challenge trophy with that subject”

She shakes her head. “An eagle,” she says thoughtfully.

“A true mausoleum should be a kind of chapel,” I explain. “Stained glass like a church, a marble sarcophagus with bronze laurel wreaths, a marble bench for your repose and silent prayer, around the outside flowers, cypresses, gravel paths, perhaps a bird bath for our feathered songsters, an enclosure for the plot of short granite columns with bronze chains, a massive iron door with the monogram, the family coat of arms, or the hallmark of the Bakers’ Guild—”

Frau Niebuhr listens as though Moritz Rosenthal were playing a Chopin nocturne. “Sounds all right,” she says then. “But haven’t you anything original?”

I stare at her angrily. She stares back coldly—the prototype of the eternal rich client.

“There are original things, to be sure,” I reply softly and venomously. “For example, like those in the Campo Santo in Genoa. Our sculptor worked there for years. One of the showpieces is by him—the figure of a weeping woman bending over a coffin, in the background the risen dead, being led heavenward by an angel. The angel is looking backward and with his free hand blesses the mourning widow. All this in white Carrara marble, the angel with wings either folded or spread—”

“Very nice. What else is there?”

“Very often the vocation of the departed is represented. For example, one could have a statue of a master baker kneading bread. Behind him stands death, tapping him on the shoulder. Death can be represented with or without a scythe, either wearing a pall or naked, that is as a skeleton, a very difficult undertaking, for a sculptor, especially in the matter of the ribs, which have to be chiseled out separately and very carefully so that they won’t break.”

Frau Niebuhr is silent as though waiting for more. “Of course the family can be added too,” I continue. “Praying at one side or cowering in terror before death. These, naturally, are objects that will run into the billions and will require a year or two of work. A big advance and consultation fees would be absolutely necessary.”

Suddenly I fear she will accept one of my proposals. A twisted angel is the height of Kurt Bach’s attainments; his art does not go beyond that. Nevertheless, at need we could give the sculpture to a subcontractor.

“And then?” Frau Niebuhr asks inexorably.

I wonder whether to tell this heartless devil something about the tomb in the form of a sarcophagus with the lid pushed a little to one side and a skeleton hand reaching out—but I decide against it. Our positions are unequal; she is the buyer and I am the seller; she can torment me, but not the other way about—and perhaps she will buy something after all.

“That’s all for the present.”

Frau Niebuhr waits a moment longer. “If you have nothing more, I must go to Hollmann and Klotz.”

She looks at me with June bug eyes. She has thrown her mourning veil back over her black hat. Now she is waiting for me to make a desperate plea. I do not do it. Instead, I explain coldly, “That will please us very much. It is our principle to draw in the competition so that people can see how capable our firm is. In commissions involving so much sculpture the artist is, of course, extremely important, otherwise you may suddenly have, as happened recently in the case of one of our competitors whose name I should prefer not to mention, an angel with two left feet. Squinting madonnas have turned up, too, and a Christ with eleven fingers. When it was noticed it was already too late.”

Frau Niebuhr brings down her veil like a theater curtain. “I’ll be on my guard!”

I am convinced she will be. She is a greedy connoisseur of her own mourning, drinking it in full draughts. It will be a long time before she places her order; for until she makes up her mind she can torment all the monument builders—but afterward only one, the one on whom she has settled. Now she is something like a footloose bachelor of sorrow—later she will be like a married man who must remain faithful.

Wilke, the coffinmaker, comes out of his workroom. There are wood shavings hanging in his mustache. In his hand he has a box of appetizing smoked sprats which he is eating with relish.

“What do you think about life?” I ask him.

He pauses. “One way in the morning and another in the evening, one way in winter and another in summer, one way before eating and another afterward, and probably one way in youth and another in age.”

“Right. Finally a sensible answer!”

“All right, if you know the answer why go on asking?”

“Asking is educational. Besides, I ask one way in the morning and another in the evening, one way in winter and another in summer, and one way before intercourse and another afterward.”

“After intercourse,” Wilke says thoughtfully. “Right you are, everything is different then! I had completely forgotten about that.”

I bow before him as though before an abbot. “Congratulations on your asceticism! You have conquered the prick of the flesh already! I wish I were as far advanced!”

“Nonsense! I’m not impotent! But women are funny when you’re a coffinmaker. They get the horrors. Don’t want to come into your workroom when there’s a coffin there. Not even if you serve Berlin pancakes and port wine.”

“Where do you serve them!” I ask. “On an unfinished coffin? You certainly don’t on a polished one; port wine leaves rings.”

“On the bench by the window. You can sit on the coffin. Besides, it isn’t even a coffin. It doesn’t become a coffin until there’s a dead body in it. Until then it’s only a piece of carpentry work.”

“Correct. But sometimes it’s hard to make the distinction!”

“It all depends. Once in Hamburg I had a girl who was equal to it. Even enjoyed it. She was keen to try. I filled a coffin half full of those soft white pine shavings that always smell so woodsy and romantic. Everything went fine. We had magnificent fun until we wanted to get out again. Some of the damned glue on the bottom hadn’t quite dried, the shavings had been pushed aside and the girl’s hair was stuck fast. She pulled a couple of times and then started to scream. She thought it was death who had got hold of her hair. She screamed and screamed, and people came running, including my boss; she was pulled out and I lost my job in a hurry. Too bad—it might have become a beautiful relationship! Life isn’t easy for people like us.”

Wilke throws me a despairing glance, then grins briefly and grubs appreciatively in the box without offering it to me. “I’ve heard of two cases of sprat poisoning,” I say. “It’s a particularly horrible and lingering death.”

Wilke dismisses the thought. “These are freshly smoked. And very tender. A delicacy. I’ll share them with you if you’ll get me a nice, unprejudiced girl—like the one in the sweater who sometimes comes to visit you.”

I stare at the coffinmaker. He undoubtedly means Gerda. Gerda for whom I am waiting at this moment. “I’m no procurer,” I say sharply. “But I’ll give you a piece of advice. Take your women someplace else, not into your workshop.”

“Where would you suggest?” Wilke is picking bones out of his teeth. “That’s just the hitch! To a hotel? Too expensive. Besides, there’s the danger of police raids. Into the city parks? The police again! Or here in the yard? My shop is better than that.”

“Haven’t you an apartment?”

“My room isn’t safe. My landlady is a dragon. Years ago I had an affair with her. In extreme need, you understand. Only for a short time—but even today, after ten years, that bitch is still jealous. All I have left is my shop. Well, how about an office of friendship? Introduce me to the lady in the sweater!”

I point silently at the empty box of sprats. Wilke throws it into the court and goes to the faucet to wash his paws. “I have a bottle of first-class blended port upstairs,” he volunteers.

“Keep the stuff for your next orgy!”

“It will turn into ink before that. But there are more sprats where these came from.”

I point to my forehead and go into the office to get a drawing pad and a folding chair so that I can sketch a mausoleum for Frau Niebuhr. I sit down beside the obelisk-there I can listen for-the telephone and at the same time keep an eye on the street and die courtyard. I plan to adorn the drawing of the memorial with this inscription: HERE, AFTER SEVERE AND PROLONGED SUFFERING, LIES MAJOR WOLKENSTEIN, RETIRED. DEPARTED THIS LIFE MAY, 1923.

One of the Knopf girls comes out and admires my work. She is a twin and can hardly be told from her sister. Their mother can do it by smell; Knopf doesn’t care, and the rest of us can never be sure. I begin to speculate about what it would be like to be married to a twin if the other were living in the same house.

Gerda interrupts me. She is standing laughing at the entrance to the court. I put my drawing aside. The twin disappears. Wilke stops washing. Behind Gerda’s back he points to the sprat box which the cat is pushing across the courtyard, then to himself and lifts two fingers. Silently he whispers: “Two.”

Today Gerda is wearing a gray sweater, a gray skirt, and a black beret. She no longer, looks like a parrot; she looks pretty and athletic and cheerful. I look at her with new eyes. A woman who is desired by someone else, even a love-starved coffinmaker, immediately becomes more precious than before. Man, as it happens, lives by relative rather than absolute values.

“Were you at the Red Mill today?” I ask.

Gerda nods. “That stinking hole! I was rehearsing there. How I hate these dives full of stale cigar smoke!”

I look at her approvingly. Behind her, Wilke is buttoning his shirt, combing the shavings out of his mustache, and adding three fingers to his bid. Five boxes of sprats! A handsome offer, but I pay no attention to it. Before me stands a week’s happiness, clear and definite, a happiness without pain—the simple happiness of the senses and of the disciplined imagination, the short happiness of a two weeks’ night-club engagement, already half over, a happiness that has freed me from Erna and has even made Isabelle what she should be, a painless fata morgana awakening to unrealizable desires.

“Come, Gerda,” I say, suddenly filled with an upwelling of natural gratitude. “Let’s go and have a first-rate meal today! Are you hungry?”

“Yes, very. We can get—”

“No potato salad today and no sausages! We’re going to have a splendid meal and celebrate our jubilee, the mid-point of our life together. A week ago you came here for the first time; in another week you will wave me farewell from the station. Let’s celebrate the former and not think about the latter!”

Gerda laughs. “As a matter of fact, I wasn’t able to make any potato salad. Too much to do. The circus is not the same as that silly cabaret.”

“Fine, then today we’ll go to the Walhalla. Do you like to eat goulash?”

“I like to eat,” Gerda replies.

“That’s the thing! Let’s stick to it! And now forward to the celebration of the high mid-point of our short life!”

I toss the drawing pad through the open window onto the office desk. As we leave I see Wilke’s infinitely disappointed face. With a hopeless look he is holding up both hands—ten boxes of sprats—a fortune!

“Why not?” Eduard Knobloch says obligingly, to my amazement. I had expected bitter opposition. The coupons are only good at noon, but, after a glance at Gerda, Eduard is ready to accept them and he even lingers beside our table: “Won’t you please introduce me?”

I am forced to do it. He has accepted the coupons, and so I must accept him. “Eduard Knobloch, hotelkeeper, restauranteur, poet, billionaire, and miser,” I explain casually. “Fräulein Gerda Schneider.”

Eduard bows, half flattered, half annoyed. “Don’t believe a word he says, gnädiges Fräulein.”

“Not even your name?” I ask.

Gerda smiles. “Are you a billionaire? How interesting!”

Eduard sighs. “Only a businessman with all a businessman’s worries. Don’t pay any attention to this silly character! And you! A beautiful, resplendent image of God, carefree as a trout swimming above the dark abysses of melancholy—”

I can’t believe my ears and gape at Eduard as though he had spit up gold. Today Gerda seems to have a magical attraction. “Never mind the plaster-card phrases, Eduard,” I say. “The lady is an artist herself. Am I supposed to be the dark abyss of melancholy? Where is the goulash?”

“I think Herr Knobloch speaks very poetically!” Gerda is looking at Eduard with innocent admiration. “How can you find time for it? With such a big establishhment and so many waiters! You must be a happy man! So rich and talented too—”

“I manage, I manage!” Eduard is beaming. “So you are an artist too—”

I see a sudden doubt lay hold of him. Unquestionably the shadow of Renée de la Tour has slipped in like a cloud across the moon. “A serious artist, I assume,” he says.

“More serious than you,” I reply. “Fräulein Schneider is no singer as you suspect. She can make lions jump through hoops and ride on tigers. And now forget the policeman that’s in you as in all true sons of our beloved fatherland and serve us our dinner!”

“Well, lions and tigers!” Eduard’s eyes have grown big. “Is that true?” he asks Gerda. “You can’t believe a word this fellow says.”

I kick her foot under the table. “I was in the circus,” Gerda replies, not understanding the reason for this byplay. “And I’m going back to the circus again.”

“What is there for dinner, Eduard?” I ask impatiently. “Or do we have to give you our whole life story in installments first?”

“I’ll go and see myself,” Eduard says gallantly to Gerda. “For such a guest! The magic of the sawdust ring! Ah! Forgive Herr Bodmer’s erratic behavior. He grew up during the war with bogtrotters and got his education from his sergeant, a hysterical postman.”

He waddles away. “A fine figure of a man,” Gerda says. “Is he married?”

“He was, but his wife ran away from him because he is so stingy.”

Gerda runs her fingers over the damask tablecloth. “She must have been a silly woman,” she says dreamily. “I like thrifty people. They save their money.”

“That’s the silliest thing you can do in the inflation.”

“Of course you have to invest it wisely.” Gerda looks at her knife and fork of heavy silver plate. “I imagine your friend here does that all right—even if he is a poet.”

I look at her in some amazement. “That may be,” I say. “But others get no advantage from it. Least of all his wife. He made her work like a slave from morning till night. Having a wife means to Eduard having someone to work for him for nothing.”

Gerda smiles ambiguously like the Mona Lisa. “Every safe has its combination, don’t you know that, baby?”

I stare at her. What’s going on here? I wonder. Is this the same girl who was dining with me last night on sandwiches and milk for a modest five thousand marks, admiring the view and talking about the magic of the simple life? “Eduard is fat, dirty, and incurably stingy,” I announce firmly. “I’ve known him for years.”

Riesenfeld, that expert on women, has told me once that this combination would scare off any woman. But Gerda seems not to be an ordinary woman. She examines the big chandeliers hanging from the ceiling like transparent stalactites, and sticks to her dream. “Probably he needs someone to take care of him. Not like a hen of course! He seems to need someone who appreciates his good qualities.”

I am now openly alarmed. Are my peaceful two weeks of happiness already slipping away? Why did I, fool that I am, have to drag Gerda here, to this place of silver and crystal? “Eduard has no good qualities,” I say.

Gerda smiles again. “Every man has some. You just have to bring them out.”

Fortunately at this moment the waiter Freidank appears, pompously bearing a pâté on a silver platter. “What in the world is that?” I ask.

“Goose liver pâté” Freidank announces haughtily.

“But it says potato soup on the menu!”

“This is the menu Herr Knobloch himself ordered,” says Freidank, a former lance corporal in the Commissary Department, slicing two pieces—a thick one for Gerda, a thin one for me. “Or would you rather have potato soup according to your constitutional rights?” he inquires cordially. “It can be done.”

Gerda laughs. Angered at Eduard’s cheap attempt to win her with food, I am about to order potato soup when Gerda kicks me under the table. On top she graciously exchanges plates with me. “That’s how it should be,” she says to Freidank. “A man must always have the larger portion, don’t you think?”

“Well, yes,” Freidank stutters, suddenly confused. “At home—but here—” The former lance corporal doesn’t know what to do. He has had orders from Eduard to give Gerda a generous slice but me a mere sliver and he has followed those orders. Now he sees the reverse happening and almost has a nervous breakdown; he must assume responsibility and doesn’t know what to do. Prompt obedience to orders has been bred into our proud blood for centuries—but to decide something by one’s self is another matter. Freidank does the one thing he knows: he looks about for his master, hoping for new orders.

Eduard appears. “Go ahead and serve, Freidank, what are you waiting for?”

I pick up my fork and quickly cut a piece of the pate in front of me, just as Freidank, true to his original orders, tries to change the plates. Freidank freezes. Gerda bursts into laughter. Eduard takes command like a general in the field, appraises the situation, pushes Freidank aside, cuts a second good-sized piece of pate, lays it with a gallant gesture in front of Gerda, and asks me in a bittersweet tone: “Do you like it?”

“It’s all right,” I reply. “Too bad it’s not goose liver.”

“It is goose liver.”

“It tastes like calf’s liver.”

“Have you ever in your life eaten goose liver?”

“Eduard,” I reply, “I have eaten so much goose liver that I vomited it.”

Eduard laughs through his nose. “Where?” he asks contemptuously.

“In France, during the advance, while I was being trained to be a man. We conquered a whole store full of goose liver. Strasbourg goose liver in tureens with black truffles from Peügord which are missing in yours. At that time you were peeling potatoes in the kitchen.”

I do not go on to say that I got sick because we also found the owner of the store—a little old woman plastered in shreds on the remnant of the wall, her gray head torn off and stuck on a store hook as though impaled on the lance of some barbarian tribesman.

“And how do you like it?” Eduard asks Gerda in the melting tones of a frog squatting happily beside the dark abysses of melancholy.

“Fine,” Gerda replies, going to work.

Eduard makes a courtly bow and withdraws like a dancing elephant. “You see,” Gerda says beaming at me. “He isn’t so stingy after all.”

I put down my fork. “Listen, you circus wonder with your sawdust halo,” I reply, “you see before you a man whose pride is still severely injured, to speak in Eduard’s jargon, because he was left flat by a lady who ran off with a rich profiteer. Is it now your intention to pour boiling oil in the still unhealed wounds, to borrow Eduard’s baroque prose again, by doing the same thing to me?”

Gerda laughs and goes on eating. “Don’t talk nonsense, my pet,” she commands with her mouth full. “And don’t be an injured liverwurst. Make more money than the others if that’s what’s bothering you.”

“Fine advice! How am I to make it? By magic?”

“The way the others do. They’ve managed somehow.”

“Eduard inherited this hotel,” I say bitterly.

“And Willy?”

“Willy is a profiteer.”

“What is a profiteer?”

“A man who knows all the angles. Who deals in everything from herrings to steel shares. Who does business where he can with whom he can and how he can as long as he manages to stay out of jail.”

“Well, there you seel” Gerda says, helping herself to the rest of the pâté.

“Do you want me to be one?”

Gerda cracks a roll with her strong teeth. “Be one or don’t just as you like. But don’t get in a stew if you don’t want to be one and the others do. Anyone can complain, my pet!”

“That’s right,” I say, perplexed and suddenly very sober. A mass of soap bubbles suddenly seem to be bursting inside my skull. I look at Gerda. She has a damnably reasonable way of looking at things. “You’re perfectly right, you know,” I say.

“Of course I’m right. But just look what’s coming! Do you think that can be for us?”

It is for us. A roast chicken and asparagus. A meal for munitions makers. Eduard supervises the serving himself. He lets Freidank carve. “The breast for madame,” he commands.

“I’d rather have a leg,” Gerda says.

“A leg and a piece of the breast for madame,” Eduard directs gallantly.

“Go right ahead,” Gerda replies, “You are a cavalier, Herr Knobloch!” I knew you were!”

Eduard smirks with self-satisfaction. I cannot understand why he is putting on this act. I can’t believe he likes Gerda so much as to make her presents of this sort; more likely he is trying to snatch her away from me out of rage over our coupons. A retaliatory act of justice. “Freidank,” I say. “Take this skeleton off my plate. I don’t eat bones. Give me the other leg in return. Or is your chicken a one-legged victim of the war?”

Freidank looks at his master like a sheep dog. “That’s the tastiest of all,” Eduard explains. “The breast bones are very delicate to nibble.”

“I’m no nibbler. I’m an eater.”

Eduard shrugs his heavy shoulders and reluctantly gives me the other leg. “Wouldn’t you rather have some salad?” he asks. “Asparagus is very injurious to drunkards.”

“Give me the asparagus. I am a modern man with a strong tendency to self-destruction.”

Eduard floats off like a rubber rhinoceros. Suddenly I have an inspiration. “Knobloch!” I roar after him in the thunderous tones of Renée de la Tour.

He whirls around as though struck in the back by a lance. “What’s the meaning of that?” he asks me indignantly.

“What?”

“To roar like that.”

“Roar? Who’s roaring except you? Or don’t you want Miss Schneider to have some salad? If not, why offer it to her?”

Eduard’s eyes become enormous. One can see in them a monstrous suspicion growing into a certainty. “You—” he asks Gerda. “Was it you who called me?”

“If there is any salad, I’d like to have some,” Gerda answers, not knowing what it is all about. Eduard continues to stand beside our table. Now he firmly believes that Gerda is Renée de la Tour’s sister. I can see how he regrets that liver pâté, the chicken, and the asparagus. He feels that he has been horribly tricked. “It was Herr Bodmer,” says Freidank, who has crept up. “I saw him.”

But Freidank’s words make no impression on Eduard. “Speak when you’re spoken to, waiter,” I say to him carelessly. “You should have learned that from the Prussians! On your way now—go on spilling goulash sauce down the necks of unsuspecting guests. And you, Eduard, since you’re here, tell me whether this magnificant meal is a gift or are you going to want our coupons for it?”

Eduard looks as though he were about to have a stroke. “Hand over the coupons, you scoundrel,” he says dully.

I tear them out and lay the bits of paper on the table. “Who’s been playing the scoundrel here is open to question, you incapable Don Juan,” I say.

Eduard does not pick up the coupons himself. “Freidank,” he says, now almost voiceless with rage. “Throw this rubbish into the wastebasket.”

“Wait,” I say, reaching for the menu. “If we are going to pay, we are still entitled to dessert. What would you like, Gerda? Rote grütze or compote?”

“What do you recommend, Herr Knobloch?” asks Gerda, unaware of the drama going on inside Eduard.

Eduard makes a despairing gesture and departs. “Well then, compote!” I shout after him.

He jerks slightly and then goes on as though he were treading on eggs. Each second he expects to hear the drill sergeant’s voice again. I hesitate and then decide against it, as a more effective tactic. “What’s going on here all of a sudden?” Gerda asks.

“Nothing,” I reply, dividing the chicken bones between us. “Nothing but a small illustration of the great Clausewitz’s thesis on strategy: Attack when your opponent thinks he has won, and then at the point where he least expects it.”

Gerda nods uncomprehendingly and begins to eat the compote that Freidank has rudely slapped down in front of us. I look at her thoughtfully and decide never to bring her to the Walhalla again, but from now on to follow Georg’s iron rule: Never take a woman to a new place, then she won’t insist on going there and won’t run away from you.

It is night. I am leaning on the window sill of my room. The moon is shining, the heavy scent of lilacs drifts up from the garden. It’s an hour since I came home from the Altstädter Hof. A pair of lovers flits along the street in the shadow of the moon and disappears into our garden. I do nothing about it; when you are not thirsty yourself you are generous toward others—and now the nights are irresistible. Just to prevent accidents, I have put signs on the two precious memorial crosses with the inscription “Warning! May fall! Avoid broken toes!” For some reason or other the lovers seem to prefer the crosses when the ground is wet; no doubt because they can hold onto them more firmly, although you would think the medium-sized monuments would do equally well. I had the notion of putting up another sign recommending them, but I gave it up. Sometimes Frau Kroll rises early and, for all her tolerance, she would box my ears for frivolity before I could explain to her that before the war I was a prudish fellow—a characteristic that disappeared during the defense of our beloved fatherland.

Suddenly I see a square black figure coming along through the moonlight. I freeze. It is Watzek, the horse butcher. He disappears into his house two hours ahead of time. Perhaps he has run out of nags; horseflesh is much in demand these days. I watch the window. It lights up, and Watzek’s shadow wanders about. I wonder whether to tell Georg Kroll; but disturbing lovers is a thankless task and, besides, it may be that Watzek will go to sleep without noticing anything. That, however, does not seem to be happening. The butcher opens the window and stares right and left along the street. I hear him snort. He closes the shutters and after a while appears at the door with a chair in his hand, his butcher’s knife in the leg of his boot. He sits down on the chair as though to await Lisa’s return. I look at the clock; it is eleven thirty. The night is warm, and Watzek may sit there for hours. Lisa, on the other hand, has been with Georg for quite a while; the hoarse panting of love has already subsided. If she runs into the butcher’s arms she will no doubt find some plausible explanation and he no doubt will be taken in. Just the same, it would be better if nothing happened.

I creep down the stairs and tap out the beginning of the “Hohenfriedberger March” on Georg’s door. His bald head appears. I tell him what has happened. “Damn it,” he says, “Go and try to get him away.”

“At this hour?”

“Try it! Exercise your charm.”

I wander out, yawn, pause, and then stroll over to Watzek. “Nice evening,” I say.

“Nice evening, shit,” Watzek replies.

“Well, of course,” I concede.

“It won’t last much longer,” Watzek says suddenly and fiercely.

“What won’t?”

“What? You know exactly what! This filthiness! What else?”

“Filthiness?” I ask in alarm. “What do you mean?”

“Well, what do you think? Don’t you see it yourself?”

I glance at the knife in his boot and I already see Georg lying with throat cut among the monuments. Not Lisa, of course; that’s man’s old idiocy. “It depends on how you look at it,” I say diplomatically. I can’t understand why Watzek hasn’t already climbed through Georg’s window. It’s on the ground floor and open.

“All that will be atoned for,” Watzek declares grimly. “Blood will flow. The guilty will pay.”

I look at him. He has long arms and a thickset frame; he looks very strong. I could catch him in the chin with my knee and when he staggered to his feet kick him between the legs—or if he tried to run I could trip him up and then pound his head on the pavement. That would do for the moment—but what about later on?

“Did you hear him?” Watzek asks.

“Who?”

“You know! Him! Who else? There’s only one after all!”

I listen. I haven’t heard a thing. The street is quiet. Georg’s window has now been cautiously closed.

“Who did you expect me to hear?” I ask loudly to win time and warn the others so that Lisa can disappear into the garden.

“Man alive, him! The Führer! Adolf Hitler!”

“Adolf Hitler!” I repeat in relief. “Him!”

“What do you mean, him?” Watzek asks challengingly. “Aren’t you for him?”

“And how! Especially just now! You can’t imagine how much!”

“Then why didn’t you listen to him?”

“But he wasn’t here.”

“He was on the radio. We heard him at the stockyard. A six-tube set. He will change everything! Marvelous speech! That man knows what’s wrong. Everything must be changed.”

“That’s obvious,” I say. There, in one sentence, lies the whole stock in trade of the world’s demagogues. “Everything must be changed! How about a beer?”

“Beer? Where?”

“At Blume’s, around the corner.”

“I’m waiting for my wife.”

“You can wait for her just as well at Blume’s. What did Hitler talk about? I’d like to know. My radio is caput.”

“About everything,” the butcher says, getting up. “That man knows everything! Everything, I tell you, comrade!”

He puts his chair back in the hall and we wander companionably off toward the Dortmunder beer in Blume’s Garden Restaurant.