The Black Obelisk

by Erich Maria Remarque

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

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

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

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

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

  Herbert bites. "What?"

  "Nothing for you. Something absolutely magnificent. But as good as sold."

  "What is it?"

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

  Scherz laughs. "I know that salesman's trick. Try another."

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

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

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

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

  "Don't hurry. You'd better see it in its proper setting, after Schwarzkopf has had it installed."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "What?"

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

  "Like ectoplasm," Wernicke throws in helpfully.

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

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

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

  "That is the famous hair-splitting of the Church fathers."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Wernicke blows smoke at me. "He makes you angry—you don't disturb him."

  "That's it!" I say. "That's what enrages me so!"

  "He knows it. That's what makes him so confident."

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

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

  "I continually feel myself responsible for everything in the world. Does that mean I'm a psychopath too?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "A sinuous panther," I help him out

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

  "Learned from you!"

  He drinks to me, unsuspiciously flattered.

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

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