The Black Obelisk

by Erich Maria Remarque

  "Pretty harmless. The farmers are well fed. In the city it's different. I have two cases where Hollmann and Klotz are on the point of closing. A red granite monument, polished on one side, with two bossed socles, a yard and a half high, two million two hundred thousand marks—and a small one, forty inches high, one million three hundred thousand. Good prices. If you ask a hundred thousand less you'll get them. My commission is twenty per cent."

  "Fifteen," I reply automatically.

  "Twenty," Weeping Oskar declares. "I get fifteen from Hollmann and Klotz as it is. So why the betrayal?"

  He is lying. Hollmann and Klotz, for whom he travels, pay him ten per cent and expenses. He gets expenses anyway; so he would be doing business with us for ten per cent extra.

  "Payment in cash?"

  "You'll have to see to that for yourselves. The people are well off."

  "Herr Fuchs," I say. "Why don't you join us? We'd pay better than Hollmann and Klotz and we can use a first-class traveler."

  Fuchs winks. "It's more fun for me this way. I'm an emotional type. When I get angry at old Hollmann I throw a job your way as revenge. If I worked for you at the time I'd get angry at you too."

  "There's something in that," I say.

  "What I mean is, then I would betray you to Hollmann and Klotz. Traveling in tombstones is so boring you have to do something to cheer yourself up."

  "Boring? For a person who puts on such an artistic performance every time?"

  Fuchs smiles like Gaston Munch of the city theater after playing the role of Karl Heinz in Alt Heidelberg. "One does the best one can," he concedes with colossal modesty.

  "They say you have developed splendidly. Without artificial aids. Simply through intuition. Is that right?"

  Oskar, who formerly had recourse to slices of raw red onions before entering a house of mourning, now maintains he can produce tears freely like a great actor. Naturally that is an enormous improvement. Now he does not have to enter a house weeping, as he did when he used the onion technique, nor, if the business lasts some time, do his tears dry up—for of course he could not use the onions while he was sitting with the mourners—on the contrary, he can now go in with dry eyes and during conversation about the departed break into natural tears, which of course produces a much stronger effect. It is like the difference between genuine and artificial pearls. Oskar maintains he is so convincing that he is often comforted and cosseted by the survivors.

  Georg Kroll comes out of his room. The smoke from a streaked Havana wreathes his face and he is the picture of satisfaction. "Herr Fuchs," he says, "is it true you can weep at will, or is that just a piece of dirty propaganda on the part of our competitors to scare us?"

  Instead of answering Oskar stares at him. "Well?" Georg Kroll asks. "What's the matter? Aren't you feeling well?"

  "Just a minute! I must get into the right mood."

  Oskar closes his eyes. When he opens them again they already look rather watery. He continues to stare at Georg and after a while there are actually heavy tears in his blue eyes. A moment later they roll down his cheeks. Oskar gets out his handkerchief and dabs at them. "How was that?" he asks, drawing out his watch. "Exactly two minutes. Sometimes I can manage it in one when there is a corpse in the house."

  "Magnificent."

  Georg pours out some of the cognac he keeps for customers. "You should have been an actor, Herr Fuchs."

  "I have thought about that; but there are two few roles in which many tears are required. Othello, to be sure, but aside from him—"

  "How do you do it? Is there a trick?"

  "Imagination," Fuchs replies simply. ^'Strong pictorial imagination."

  "What were you picturing just now?"

  Oskar empties his glass. "To speak candidly, you, Herr Kroll: with splintered arms and legs, and a swarm of rats slowly gnawing your face while you were still alive but unable to keep the creatures away because of your broken arms. I beg your pardon, but for such a quick performance I needed a very strong image."

  Georg runs his hand over his face. It is still there. "Do you imagine the same sort of pictures of Hollmann and Klotz when you're working for them?" I ask.

  Fuchs shakes his head. "I picture them reaching the age of a hundred, still rich and healthy, and finally being carried off painlessly in their sleep by a heart attack—then tears of rage stream down my cheeks."

  Georg pays him the commisssion for the last two betrayals. "I have recently developed an artificial hiccup too," Oskar says. "Very effective. It speeds up the agreement. The people feel guilty because they think it is a result of my sympathy."

  "Herr Fuchs, join us!" I say again impulsively. "You belong in an establishment that is run along artistic lines—not with mere money grubbers."

  Weeping Oskar smiles good-naturedly, shakes his head, and prepares to depart. "I can't just now. Without a little betrayal I would be nothing but a dripping washrag. Betrayal gives me poise. Do you understand?"

  "We understand," Georg says. "We are crushed by regret but we respect personality above everything."

  I note the addresses for the tombstones on a piece of paper and give it to Heinrich Kroll, who is in the courtyard, pumping up the tires of his bicycle. He looks at the slip contemptuously. To an old Nibelung like him, Oskar is a common scoundrel, though he is happy, also like an old Nibelung, to profit from him. "We never used to need this sort of thing," he exclaims. "Lucky my father didn't live to see it."

  "According to what I've heard about that pioneer of the gravestone business, your father would have been beside himself with joy to play such a trick on the competition," I reply. "He was a fighter by nature—not like you, on the field of honor, but in the trenches of uncompromising business warfare. By the way, are we going to get the rest of the payment for that war memorial you sold in April? There are two hundred thousand marks still due. You know what that's worth now? Not so much as a socle!"

  Heinrich mutters something and puts the slip of paper in his pocket. I go back, pleased to have taken him down a bit. In front of the house stands the piece of gutter pipe that broke off during the last rainstorm. The workmen have just finished; they have replaced the broken section. "What about the old pipe?" the foreman asks. "You don't need it Shall we take it along?"

  "Sure," Georg says.

  The pipe is leaning against the obelisk, Knopfs open-air pissoir. It is several yards long and has a right angle at one end. Suddenly I have an inspiration. "Leave it here," I say. "We can use it."

  "What for?" Georg asks.

  "For this evening. You'll see. It will be an interesting performance."

  Heinrich Kroll pedals off. Georg and I stand in front of the door, drinking glasses of beer that Frau Kroll has handed out through the kitchen window. The weather is very hot. Wilke, the coffinmaker, steals by, carrying bottled beer. He is on his way to take a siesta in a coffin upholstered with shavings. Butterflies play around the memorial crosses. The Knopf family's pied cat is pregnant. "Where does the dollar stand?" I ask. "Have you phoned?"

  "Fifteen thousand marks higher than this morning. If it goes on like this we'll be able to pay Riesenfeld's promissory note with the price of a small headstone."

  "Marvelous. Only it's too bad we haven't kept any of it That takes away some of the necessary zest, doesn't it?"

  Georg laughs. "Some of the seriousness of the business too. Except for Heinrich, of course. What are you doing this evening?"

  "I'm going up the hill to see Wernicke. There, at least, they know nothing about the seriousness and silliness of business. Up there the only stake is existence—always the whole of being, life and nothing short of life. There's no smaller wager. If you lived up there for a while, our absurd haggling over trivialities would seem insane."

  "Bravo," Georg replies. "For this nonsense you deserve a second glass of ice-cold beer." He takes our glasses and hands from in through the kitchen window." Gnädige Frau, the same thing again, please."

  Frau Kroll sticks her gray head out. "
Would you like a fresh herring and a pickle with it?"

  "Absolutely! And a slice of bread. The proper petit déjeuner for any kind of Weltschmerz," Georg replies, handing me my glass. "Do you suffer from it?"

  "A respectable man of my age always suffers from Weltschmerz," I reply firmly. "It's the prerogative of youth."

  "I thought they'd stolen your youth in the army?"

  "That's right. I'm still searching for it and I can't find it. That's why I have double Weltschmerz. The way an amputated foot hurts twice as much."

  The beer is wonderfully cold. The sun burns the tops of our heads, and suddenly, despite all the Weltschmerz, there occurs another of those instants when you look at very close range into the green-gold eyes of life. I finish my beer thoughtfully. It seems all at once as though my veins had had a sunbath. "We keep forgetting that we only live on this planet for a short time," I say. "And so we have a completely crazy attitude toward the world. Like men who would live forever. Have you noticed that?"

  "And how! It's humanity's cardinal mistake. That's why otherwise entirely sensible people leave millions of dollars to horrible relations instead of spending it on themselves."

  "Good! What would you do if you knew you were going to die tomorrow?"

  "No notion."

  "No? All right, perhaps, one day is too short. What would you do if you knew you'd be gone in a week?"

  "Still no notion."

  "But you'd have to do something! Suppose you had a month's time?"

  "Very likely I'd go on living the way I do now," Georg says. "Otherwise I'd have the miserable feeling all month that I'd lived my life wrong up to then."

  "You'd have a month's time to correct it."

  Georg shakes his head. "I'd have a month to regret it."

  "You could sell our inventory to Hollmann and Klotz, rush to Berlin, and for a month live a breathtaking life with actors, artists, and elegant whores."

  "The funds wouldn't last a week. The ladies would only be barmaids. And besides, I prefer to read about it. Imagination never disappoints you. But how about you? What would you do if you knew you were going to die in four weeks?"

  "I?" I say, caught off my guard.

  "Yes, you."

  I glance around. There lies the garden, hot and green, in all the colors of midsummer. There the swallows sail, there is the endless blue of the heavens, and upstairs old Knopf goggles down at us from his window, just emerging from his drunk and clad in suspenders and a checked shirt. "I'd have to think about it," I say. "I can't answer right away. There's too much. Right now all I have is a feeling I'd explode if I understood it all as I'd like to."

  "Don't think too hard; otherwise well have to take you to Wernicke. And not to play the organ."

  "That's it," I say. "Really that's it! If we could grasp it fully we would go mad."

  "Another glass of beer?" Frau Kroll asks through the kitchen window. "There's raspberry jam here too. Fresh."

  "Rescued!" I say. " Gnädige Frau, you have just rescued me. I was like an arrow on its way to the sun and to Wernicke. Thank God everything is still here! Nothing has burned up! Sweet life continues to frolic around us with flies and butterflies, nothing has been reduced to ashes, it is here, it still has all its laws, even those we impose upon it like a bridle on a thoroughbred! However—no raspberry jam with beer, please! Instead, a piece of runny Harz cheese. Good morning, Herr Knopf! A fine day! What's your opinion of life!"

  Knopf stares at me. His face is gray and there are sacks under his eyes. After a while he gesticulates at me angrily and closes his window. "Weren't you going to say something to him?" Georg asks.

  "Yes, but not till tonight."

  We go into Eduard Knobloch's restaurant. "Look over there," I say, stopping as though I had run into a tree. "Life seems to be up to its tricks here too! I should have guessed it!"

  Gerda is sitting at a table in the wine room with a vase of tiger lilies in front of her. She is alone and is hacking away at a venison steak that is almost as big as the table. "What do you say to that?" I ask Georg. "Doesn't it smell of betrayal?"

  "Was there anything to betray?"

  "No. But what about unfaithfulness?"

  "Was there anything to be faithful to?"

  "Oh stop it, Socrates!" I reply. "Can't you see Eduard's fat paw at work here?"

  "I see it all right. But who has betrayed you? Eduard or Gerda?"

  "Gerda! Who do you think? The man's never responsible."

  "Nor the woman either."

  "Then who?"

  "You."

  "All right," I say. "It's easy for you to talk. You don't get betrayed. You are a betrayer yourself."

  Georg nods with self-satisfaction. "Love is a matter of emotion," he instructs me. "Not of morality. Emotion, however, knows nothing of betrayal. It increases, disappears, or changes—so where is the betrayal? There is no contract. Didn't you deafen Gerda with your howling about your sufferings over Erna?"

  "Only at the beginning. You know she was there when we had our row in the Red Mill."

  "Then don't yammer now. Give up or do something." Some people get up from a table near us. We sit down. Freidank, the waiter, veers away. "Where's Herr Knobloch?"

  I ask.

  Freidank glances around. "I don't know—he had been here all along, at that table over there with the lady."

  "Simple, isn't it?" I say to Georg. "That's where we stand now. I am a natural victim of the inflation. Once again. First with Erna, now with Gerda. Am I a born cuckold? Things like this don't happen to you."

  "Fight!" Georg replies. "Nothing is lost yet Go over to Gerda!"

  "What am I to fight with? Tombstones? Eduard gives her venison and dedicates poems to her. In poems she can't see differences of quality—in food unfortunately she can. And I, fool that I am, have only myself to blame! I brought her here and aroused her appetite. Literally!"

  "Then give up," Georg says. "Why fight? One can't fight about emotions anyway."

  "No? Then why did you advise me to a minute ago?"

  "Because today is Tuesday. Here comes Eduard—in his Sunday best with a rosebud in his buttonhole. You're done for."

  Eduard is taken aback when he sees us. He peers over toward Gerda and then greets us with the condescension of a victor. "Herr Knobloch," Georg says, "is loyalty the badge of honor, as our beloved field marshal has declared, or isn't it?"

  "It all depends," Eduard replies cautiously. "Today we have Königsberger meat balls with gravy and potatoes. A fine meal."

  "Does a soldier strike his comrade in the back?" Georg asks, undeterred. "Does a brother strike his brother? Does a poet strike a fellow poet?"

  "Poets attack each other all the time. That's what they live for."

  "They live for open battle, not for stabs in the belly," I interpose.

  Eduard grins broadly. "To the victor the spoils, my dear Ludwig; catch as catch can. Do I whine when you come in here with your miserable coupons that aren't worth peanuts?"

  "Yes, you do," I say, "and how!"

  At this instant Eduard is pushed aside. "Why, there you

  are, children," Gerda says affectionately. "Let's eat together! I was hoping you would come!"

  "You're sitting in the wine room," I reply venomously. "We're drinking beer."

  "I prefer beer too. I'll sit down with you."

  "With your permission, Eduard?" I ask. "Catch as catch can?"

  "What has Eduard's permission to do with it?" Gerda asks. "Why, he's delighted for me to eat with his friends, aren't you, Eduard?"

  The serpent is already calling him by his first name.

  Eduard stammers. "Of course, no objection, naturally, a pleasure—"

  He makes a fine picture, red, raging, and making an effort to smile. "That's a pretty rosebud you're wearing," I say. "Are you going courting? Or is it simple delight in nature?"