I nod, looking at her slender neck. Everything rings in you, I think. She breaks off a tulip and looks at the open blossom and the fleshy stem from which sap is oozing. "They are not sweet."
"All right—then they're bells in C sharp."
"Must it be sharp?"
"It could be flat."
"Can't it be both at the same time?"
"Not in music. There are certain rules. It can be only one or the other. Or one after the other."
"One after the other!" Isabelle looks at me with mild contempt. "You always use these pretexts, Rolf. Why?"
"I don't know either. I wish things were otherwise."
Suddenly she straightens up and throws away the tulip she has picked. With a leap she is out of the bed and is vigorously shaking her dress. Then she pulls it up and looks at her legs. Her face is twisted with disgust. "What happened?" I ask in alarm.
She points at the bed. "Snakes—"
I glance at the beds. "There aren't any snakes there, Isabelle."
"Yes there are! Those there!" She points at the tulips. "Don't you see what they want?"
"They don't want anything. They are flowers," I say un-comprehendingly.
"They touched me!" She is trembling with disgust and staring at the tulips.
I take her by the arm and turn her around so that she can no longer see the bed. "Now you're turned around," I say. "Now they're not there any more, Isabelle."
She is breathing heavily. "Don't permit it! Stamp on them, Rudolf."
"They're not there any more. You have turned around and now they're gone. Like the grass at night and the things."
She leans against me. Suddenly I am no longer Rolf. She presses her face against my shoulder. She doesn't have to explain anything more to me. I am Rudolf and must know. "Are you sure?" she asks, and I feel her heart beating against my hand.
"Perfectly sure. They're gone. Like servants on Sunday."
"Don't permit it, Rudolf."
"I won't permit it," I say, not knowing what she means. But that's unimportant. She is already growing calmer.
We walk back slowly. Almost without transition she becomes tired. A nurse marches up on flat heels. "You must come and eat, Mademoiselle."
"Eat," Isabelle says. "Why must one eat all the time, Rudolf?"
"So that you won't die."
"You're lying again," she says wearily, like a helpless child.
"Not this time. This time it's true."
"Really? Do stones eat?"
"Are stones alive?"
"Of course. More intensely than anything. So intensely that they are eternal. Don't you know what a crystal is?"
"Only from my physics lessons. That's sure to be wrong.*'
"Pure ecstasy," Isabelle whispers. "Not like those over there—" She makes a gesture back toward the flower bed.
The attendant takes her arm. "Where is your hat, Mademoiselle?" she asks after a few steps, looking around. "Wait a moment, I'll get it."
She goes to retrieve the hat from among the flowers. Behind her Isabelle comes over to me hastily, her expression distraught. "Don't abandon me, Rudolf!" she whispers.
"I won't abandon you."
"And don't go away! I have to leave. They are taking me! But don't you go away!"
"I won't go away, Isabelle."
The attendant has rescued the hat and now marches up to us like fate on broad soles. Isabelle stands there looking at me. It is as though it were farewell forever. It's always as though it were a farewell forever. Who knows how she will be when she returns?
"Put your hat on, Mademoiselle," says the attendant.
Isabelle takes it and lets it hang loose from her hand. The light in her eyes goes out. She turns and goes back to the pavilion. She does not look around.
It all began one day early in March when Geneviève suddenly came up to me in the park and began to talk to me as though we had known each other for a long time. There was nothing unusual about that—in the asylum you don't need to be introduced; you are beyond formalities here, and people speak to each other when they feel like it, without lengthy preambles. They speak at once about whatever comes into their heads, and it makes no difference if the other does not understand—that's unimportant. One doesn't want to persuade or to explain; one is there and one speaks, and often two people talk to each other splendidly because neither listens to what the other is saying. Pope Gregory Vü, for example, a little man with bandy legs, does not argue. He does not need to persuade anyone that he is pope. He is, and that's the end of it. He is having serious troubles with Henry IV; Canossa is not far off, and sometimes he talks about it It doesn't matter that his interlocutor is a man who believes he is made entirely of glass and begs everyone not to jostle him because he is already cracked—the two talk together, Gregory about the king who must do penance in his shirt, and the glass man about how he cannot stand the sun because it is reflected in him—then Gregory bestows the papal blessing, the glass man for an instant takes off the cloth that protects his transparent head against the sun, and both take leave of each other with the courtesy of past centuries. So I was not surprised when Geneviève came up to me and began to talk; I was only surprised at how beautiful she was, for at that moment she was Isabelle.
She talked to me for a long time. She was wearing a light cape of blond fur that was worth at least ten or twenty memorial crosses of the best Swedish granite; with it she wore an evening dress and gold sandals. It was eleven o'clock in the morning, and in the world beyond the walls this costume would have been surprising. Here, however, it was simply exciting; as though someone had drifted down in a parachute from some happier planet.
It was a day of sun, showers, wind, and sudden stillness. They whirled together in confusion; one hour it was March, the next April, and then without transition a day in May or June. Into this confusion came Isabelle from God knows where—from somewhere beyond boundaries, where the light of reason penetrates only in distorted streams, like the aurora borealis, across skies that know neither day nor night, only their own echoing beams and the echoes of those echoes and the pale light of the Beyond and of timeless vastness.
She confused me from the start, and all the advantages were on her side. I had, to be sure, got rid of many bourgeois concepts in the war, but this had only made me cynical and a little desperate, not superior and free. So I sat there and stared at her as though she were a creature without weight hovering in the air while I stumbled awkwardly after her. Moreover, a strange wisdom often flickered in what she said; it was only displaced and then, astoundingly, it would reveal vistas that made one's heart pound; but when one tried to hold onto it, veils of mist intervened, and Isabelle was already somewhere else.
She kissed me on the first day, and she did it so naturally that it seemed to mean nothing at all; but that did not keep me from feeling it. I felt it, it excited me, and then it struck like a wave against the barrier reef—I knew she did not mean me at all; she meant someone else, some figure of her fantasy, Rolf or Rudolf; and perhaps she did not mean them either, perhaps they were just names thrown up from dark, subterranean streams, without roots or connections.
From then on she came into the garden almost every Sunday; when it was raining she came to the chapel. The Mother Superior allowed me to practice on the organ after mass when I felt like it. I did it on rainy days. I did not really practice, my playing was good enough to be called that; I simply played for myself, as I did on my piano, vague fantasies of one sort or another, dreams and yearning for the unknown, for the future, for fulfillment, and for my own self; to do that one does not have to play especially well. Sometimes Isabelle came with me and listened. On those days she would sit below me in the half-dark, the rain would beat against the stained-glass windows, and the organ tones would go out over her dark head—I did not know what she was thinking, and it was strange and rather touching, but suddenly in the background loomed the question Why, the screaming terror, the fear, and the silence. I felt all that and I felt, t
oo, something of the incomprehensible loneliness of the creature when we were in that empty church with the twilight and the organ tones, only we two alone as though we were the last creatures, held together by the half-light, the music, and the rain, and nevertheless separated forever, without a bridge, without understanding, without words, with only the strange glow of the little campfires on the outskirts of the life within us which we saw and misunderstood, she in her fashion, I in mine, blind and deaf and dumb without being either dumb or deaf or blind, and for that reason much poorer and more bereft. What was it in her that had made her come up to me? I did not know and would never know—it was buried under the rubble of a landslide—nor did I understand why this strange relationship should confuse me so since I knew what was wrong with her and that she did not mean me. Nevertheless, it filled me with undefined yearning and disturbed me and sometimes made me happy and unhappy without rhyme or reason....
A little nurse comes up to me. "Mother Superior would like to speak to you."
I get up and follow her, feeling uncomfortable. Perhaps one of the nurses has been spying and the Mother Superior is going to tell me that I am not to speak to inmates under sixty, or she may even dismiss me, although the physician in charge has said that it is a good thing for Isabelle to have company.
The Mother Superior receives me in her reception room. It smells of floor wax, virtue, and soap. Not a breath of spring has penetrated here. The Mother Superior, a gaunt, energetic woman, greets me. cordially; she considers me a model Christian who loves God and believes in the Church. "Soon it will be May," she says, looking me straight in the eye.
"Yes," I reply, examining the snowy white curtains and the bare, shining floor.
"We have been wondering whether we could not hold some May devotions."
I am silent and relieved. "In the city churches there are devotions every evening at eight during May," the Mother Superior explains.
I nod. I know those May devotions. Incense wells up through the twilight, the monstrance gleams, and after the devotion young people wander about in the squares for a time under the old trees where the June bugs buzz. To to sure, I never attend; but I know about them from the time before I was a soldier. That was my first experience with girls. It was all very exciting and secret and harmless. But I wouldn't think of coming up here every evening for a month to play the organ.
"We would like to have a devotion at least on Sunday evenings," says the Mother Superior. "I mean a formal one with organ music and the Te Deum. There are simple prayers every evening for the nuns as it is."
I reflect. Sunday evenings are tiresome in the city, and the devotion lasts barely an hour. "We can pay you very little," the Mother Superior explains. "The same as for the mass. That's probably not much now, is it?"
"No," I say. "It's not much now. We have an inflation outside."
"I know." She stands there undecided. "The Church's way of dealing with requests is unfortunately not adapted to these times. The Church thinks in centuries. We must accept that. After all, one works for God and not for money. Don't you agree?"
"One can work for both," I reply. "That's a particularly happy situation."
She sighs. "We are bound by the decisions of the Church authorities. They are taken once a year, no oftener."
"For the salaries of the pastors, the cathedral chaplains, and the bishop too?" I ask.
"I don't know about that," she says, flushing a little. "But I think so."
Meanwhile, I have made up my mind. "This evening I haven't time," I explain. "We have an important business meeting."
"But today is still April. Now, next Sunday—or if you can't do it on Sundays perhaps some day of the week. After all, it would be nice to have proper May devotions. The Divine Mother will certainly reward you."
"Unquestionably. Then there is only the problem of supper. Eight o'clock is just in between. Afterward is too late and beforehand it would be a scramble."
"Oh, as far as that is concerned, of course you could eat here if you liked. His Reverence always eats here too. Perhaps that's a solution."
It is exactly the solution I wanted. The food here is almost as good as at Eduard's, and if I eat in company with the priest there is certain to be a bottle of wine as well. Since Eduard refuses to accept tickets on Sunday, this is indeed a splendid solution.
"All right," I say. "I'll try to do it. We don't need to say any more about the money."
The Mother Superior sighs with relief. "God will reward you."
I walk back. The garden paths are empty. For a time I wait for the yellow sail of shantung silk. Then the bells of the city ring for midday, and I know it's time for Isabelle's nap and after that the doctor; there is nothing more to be done until four o'clock. I walk through the big gate and down the hill.
Beneath me lies the city with its steeples green with verdigris and its smoking chimneys. On both sides of the allée, beyond the horse chestnut trees, stretch the fields where on weekdays the nondangerous inmates work. The institution is part public, part private. The private patients, of course, do not have to work. Beyond the fields are woods, streams, ponds, and clearings. When I was a boy I used to fish there and catch salamanders and butterflies. That was only ten years ago, but it seems to belong to a different life—to a vanished time in which existence proceeded in orderly organic sequence and everything belonged together, from childhood on. The war changed that; since 1914 we live scraps of one life and then scraps of a second and a third; they do not belong together and we are not able to put them together. For this reason it is really not so hard for me to understand Isabelle and her different lives. Only she is almost better off in this respect than we are; when she is in one, she forgets all the others. With us they are hopelessly confused —childhood, cut short by the war, the time of hunger and fraud, of trenches and lust for life—something of all these has been left over and remains with us even now, making us restless. You cannot simply push it away. It keeps bobbing back disconcertingly, and then you are confronted by irreconcilable contrast: the skies of childhood and the science of killing, lost youth and the cynicism of knowledge gained too young.
4.
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 honora
rium.
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.
The Black Obelisk Page 5
