The Black Obelisk

by Erich Maria Remarque

  "The matter is simple enough for us," I say. "Tombstones with two inscriptions are used all the time. There are even family tombstones with six or eight inscriptions."

  The woman nods. "That's how it must be! They must lie together. They were always together."

  Wilke gets a carpenter's pencil out of his vest pocket. "It would look odd. The coffin would be too wide. Almost square, the children are still very small, aren't they? How old?"

  "Four and a half."

  Wilke draws. "Like a square box," he concludes. "Wouldn't you rather—"

  "No," the woman interrupts. "They must remain together. They are twins."

  "You can make very pretty little single coffins for twins in white lacquer. The shape is more attractive. A short double coffin would look squat—"

  "That doesn't matter to me," the woman says stubbornly. "They had a double cradle and a double baby carriage and now they shall have a double coffin too. They must remain together."

  Wilke sketches again. Nothing emerges but a square box, though this time decorated on top with leaves and ivy. In the case of grownups there would have been more opportunity for variation; but children are too short. "I don't even know whether it is allowed," he says as a last resort.

  "Why shouldn't it be allowed?"

  "It is unusual."

  "It is also unusual for two children to die on the same day," the woman replies.

  "That is true, especially when they are twins." Wilke is suddenly interested. "Did they have the same disease?"

  "Yes," the woman replies sharply. "The same disease: they were born after the war when there was nothing to eat. Twins. I didn't even have enough milk for one—"

  Wilke leans forward. "The same disease!" Scientific curiosity burns in his eyes. 'They say that often happens with twins. Astrologically—"

  "What about the coffin?" I ask. The woman doesn't look as though she wanted to carry on a prolonged conversation on this subject which so fascinates Wilke.

  "I can try," Wilke says. "But I don't know whether it's allowed. Do you know?" he asks me.

  "One could ask at the cemetery."

  "How about the priest? How were the children baptized?"

  The woman hesitates. "One is Catholic, the other Evangelical," she says. "We agreed on that. My husband is Catholic, I am Evangelical. So we agreed that the children should be divided."

  "Then you had one baptized a Catholic and the other Evangelical?" Wilke asks.

  "Yes."

  "On the same day?"

  "On the same day."

  Wilke's interest in the marvels of existence is kindled afresh. "In two different churches, of course?"

  "Of course," I say impatiently. "What did you think? And now—"

  "But how could you tell them apart?" Wilke interrupts me. "I mean every day. Were they identical twins?"

  "Yes," the woman says. "As alike as two eggs."

  "That's just what I mean! How can you tell them apart, especially when they're so small? Could you? I mean during the first days when everything is in confusion?"

  The woman is silent.

  "That doesn't make any difference now," I announce, motioning Wilke to stop.

  But Wilke has the unsentimental curiosity of the scientist. "It does make a difference," he replies. "After all, they have to be buried! One is Catholic and the other Evangelical. Do you know which the Catholic is?"

  The woman is silent. Wilke warms to his theme. "Do you think you will be allowed to bury them together? If you have a double coffin, you'll have to, of course. Then you will have to have two ministers at the grave, one Catholic, the other Evangelical! They certainly won't agree to that! They are more jealous of God than we are of our wives."

  "Wilke, that's none of your business," I say, giving him a kick under the table.

  "And the twins!" Wilke cries, paying no attention to me. "The Catholic twin would have to be buried with Evangelical rites and the Evangelical twin with Catholic! Just picture the confusion! No, you won't be able to get away with a double coffin! Single coffins, that's what it will have to be! Then each religion will have its own. The men of God can turn their backs on each other and thus bestow their blessings."

  Wilke apparently imagines that one religion is poison to the other. "Have you spoken to the priests about it?" he asks.

  "My husband is doing that," the woman says.

  "You know, I'll be really curious—"

  "Will you make the double coffin?" the woman asks.

  "I'll make it, of course, but I tell you—"

  "What will it cost?" the woman asks.

  Wilke scratches his head. "When must it be ready?"

  "As soon as possible."

  "Then I'll have to work through the night. Overtime. It will have to be specially designed."

  "What will it cost?" the woman asks.

  "I'll tell you when I deliver it. Ill keep the price down, for the sake of science. Only I won't be able to take it back if you are not allowed to use it."

  "I shall be allowed."

  Wilke looks at the woman in amazement. "How do you know?"

  "If the priests won't bestow their blessings, we'll bury them without priests," the woman says harshly. "They were always together and they shall stay together."

  Wilke nods. "Well then, agreed—the coffin will definitely be delivered. But I won't be able to take it back."

  The woman gets a black leather purse with a nickel clasp out of her handbag. "Do you want a deposit?"

  "It's customary. For the wood."

  The woman looks at Wilke. "One million," he says, somewhat embarrassed.

  The woman gives him the bills. They have been folded and refolded. "The address—" she says.

  "I'll go with you," Wilke announces. "To take measurements. They shall have a good coffin."

  The woman nods and looks at me. "And a headstone? When will you deliver that?"

  "Whenever you like. Generally people wait for a couple of months after the funeral."

  "Can we have it right away?"

  "Certainly. But it's better to wait. The grave sinks after a while. It's not advisable to put up the stone before that, otherwise it has to be reset."

  "Yes?" the woman says. For an instant the pupils of her eyes seem to quiver. "Nevertheless, we'd like to have the stone right away. Can't you—isn't there some way of setting it so it won't sink?"

  "To do that, we'd have to make a special foundation for the stone before the burial. Do you want that?"

  The woman nods. "Their names must be there," she says. "They mustn't just lie there. It's better if their names are there from the beginning."

  She gives me the number of the cemetery lot. "I'd like to pay right away," she says. "How much does it come to?"

  She opens the black leather purse again. I tell her the price, as embarrassed as Wilke. "Nowadays everything is in the millions and billions," I add.

  It is strange how you can sometimes tell whether people are decent and honorable by the way they fold their money. The woman unfolds one note after the other and lays them on the table beside the samples of granite and limestone. "We saved up this money for their schooling," she says. "Now it would not be nearly enough—but for this it will just do—"

  "Out of the question!" Riesenfeld says. "Have you any idea what black Swedish granite costs? It comes from Sweden, young man, and can't be bought with German marks! You have to pay in foreign exchange! Swedish kronen! We have only a few blocks left—for friends! The last ones! They are like blue-white diamonds! I'm giving you one for the evening with Madame Watzek—but two! Have you lost your mind? I might just as well ask Von Hindenburg to become a communist."

  "What a thought!"

  "Well, you see! Accept this rarity and don't try to get more out of me than your boss did. Since you're office boy and general manager in one, you don't need to worry about getting ahead."

  "No, I don't. I'm doing it out of pure love of granite. Platonic love, as a matter of fact. I don't even intend t
o sell it myself."

  "You don't?" Riesenfeld asks, pouring himself a glass of schnaps.

  "No," I reply. "I'm thinking of changing my profession."

  "What, again?" Riesenfeld pushed his chair around so he can see Lisa's window.

  "Seriously this time."

  "Back to schoolteaching?"

  "No," I say. "I'm no longer inexperienced enough for that. Or conceited enough either. Do you know of anything I could get? You get around a lot."

  "What sort of thing?" Riesenfeld asks uninterestedly.

  "Anything at all in a big city. Copy boy on a newspaper perhaps."

  "Stay here," Riesenfeld says. "You fit in here. I'd miss you. Why do you want to leave?"

  "I can't exactly explain. If I could, it wouldn't be so necessary. Sometimes I don't even know myself; only once in a while, but then I know damn well."

  "And you know now?"

  "I know now."

  "My God!" Riesenfeld says. "You'll wish you were back!"

  "Absolutely, that's why I intend to go."

  Suddenly Riesenfeld jumps as though he had laid hold of an electric wire with a wet paw. Lisa has turned on the light in her room and has stepped to the window. She appears not to see us in the half-darkened office and she slowly takes off her blouse. She is wearing nothing under it.

  Riesenfeld snorts aloud. "God in Heaven, what breasts! You could easily put a half-liter stein on them with no danger of its falling!"

  "That's an idea," I say.

  Riesenfeld's eyes sparkle. "Does Frau Watzek do that all the time?"

  "She's pretty casual. No one can see her—except us over here, of course."

  "Man alive!" Riesenfeld says. "And you want to give up a position like this, you total idiot?"

  "Yes," I say, and am silent while Riesenfeld steals to the window like a Würtemberg Indian, his glass in one hand, the bottle of schnaps in the other.

  Lisa is combing her hair. "Once I wanted to be a sculptor," Reisenfeld says without removing his eyes from her. "With a model like that it would have been worthwhile! Damn it, the chances a man neglects!"

  "Did you plan to work in granite?"

  "What's that got to do with it?"

  "When you use granite the models grow old before the work of art is finished," I say. "It's so hard. With a temperament like yours you should have chosen clay. Otherwise you'd have left nothing but unfinished works."

  Riesenfeld groans. Lisa has taken off her skirt but has then turned out the light and gone into the next room. The head of the Odenwald Works clings to the window for a while longer, then turns around. "It's easy for you!" he growls. "You have no demon sitting on your neck. A suckling calf at most."

  "Merci" I say. "It's not a demon in your case either; it's a billy goat. Anything else?"

  "A letter," Riesenfeld announces. "Will you deliver a letter for me?"

  "To whom?"

  "Frau Watzek! Who else?"

  I am silent.

  "I'll look around for a job for you," Riesenfeld says.

  I continue to be silent, watching the perspiring, disappointed sculptor. I intend to keep faith with Georg, even if it costs me my future.

  "I'd have done it anyway," Riesenfeld explains hypocritically.

  "I know you would," I say. "But why write? Letters never do any good. Besides, you're leaving tonight. Postpone the whole thing till you come back."

  Riesenfeld finishes his schnaps. "It may seem odd to you, but one is extremely disinclined to postpone matters of this sort."

  At this moment Lisa comes out of her front door. She is wearing a black tailor-made dress and the highest heels I have ever seen. Riesenfeld spies her at the same instant I do. He snatches his hat from the table and rushes out. "This is the moment!"

  I watch him shoot down the street. Hat in hand, he respectfully strolls up beside Lisa, who has looked around twice. Then the two disappear around the comer. I wonder what will come of it. Georg Kroll will be certain to let me know. Quite possibly the lucky fellow will get a second Swedish-granite monument out of the business without losing Lisa.

  Wilke, the coffinmaker, is coming across the courtyard. "How about a meeting tonight?" he shouts through the window. I nod. I have been expecting him to propose it. "Is Bach coming?" I ask.

  "Yes. I've just been getting cigarettes for him."

  We are sitting in Wilke's workshop surrounded by shavings, coffins, potted geraniums, and pots of glue. There is a smell of resin and fresh-cut pine wood. Wilke is planing down the cover for the twins' coffin. He has decided to include a garland of flowers, gratis, and to embellish it with artificial gold leaf. When his interest is aroused, he cares nothing about profit. And now it is aroused.

  Kurt Bach is sitting on a black lacquered coffin with fittings of imitation bronze; I on a showpiece of natural oak in a dull finish. We have beer, sausage, bread, and cheese before us and have decided to keep Wilke company during the ghostly hour. Between twelve and one at night, the coffinmaker usually grows melancholy, sleepy, and rather scared. It is his weak hour. One wouldn't believe it, but at that time he is afraid of ghosts, and the canary that hangs over his workbench in a parrot cage is not company enough for him. It is then that he becomes discouraged, talks about the pointlessness of existence, and takes to drink. We have often found him next morning snoring on a bed of shavings in his largest coffin, the one he was so badly cheated on four years ago. The coffin was built for the giant of the Bleichfeld Circus, which was playing for a time in Werdenbrück. After a dinner of Limburger cheese, hard-boild eggs, bologna, army bread, and schnaps, he died—apparently died, that is, for while Wilke was slaving through the night, in defiance of all ghosts, to complete the giant's coffin, the latter suddenly rose with a start from his deathbed, and, instead of informing Wilke on the spot, as a decent person would have done, finished up a half-bottle of schnaps that was left over and went to sleep. Next morning, he maintained he had no money and, besides, had not ordered a coffin for himself, an objection to which there was no answer. The circus moved on, and since no one would admit to having ordered the coffin, Wilke was left with it on his hands, and thereby acquired for a time a somewhat embittered view of the world. He was particularly incensed at young Dr. Wullmann, whom he considered responsible for the whole thing. Wullmann had been an army doctor and had seen two years' service; as a result he had grown venturesome. By treating so many half-dead and three-quarters-dead soldiers in the field hospital without being answerable to anyone for their deaths or misset bones, he had picked up a lot of interesting experience. For this reason he slipped in at night to have one more look at the giant and gave him an injection of some sort. He had often seen dead men come to life in the field hospital. The giant, too, promptly responded. Since that time, Wilke has had a certain prejudice against Wullmann, which the latter has not been able to eradicate despite the fact that he has recently behaved more sensibly and has sent families of his ex-patients to Wilke. For Wilke, the giant coffin has been a permanent warning against credulity, and I believe it was also what prompted him to go home with the twins' mother—he wanted to assure himself that the dead were not galloping around on hobbyhorses. It would have been too much for Wilke's self-respect to have been left with a square, twins' coffin, in addition to the unsalable giant coffin, and thus to have become a kind of Barnum of the cof-finmaker's guild. The thing that angered him most about the Wullmann business was that he had no chance for private conversation with the giant. He would have forgiven anything for an interview about the Beyond. After all, the giant had been as good as dead for several hours, and Wilke, as amateur scientist and dreader of ghosts, would have given a great deal to get information about existence on the other side.

  Kurt Bach has no patience with all this. A son of nature, he is still a member of the Society of Freethinkers in Berlin, whose motto is: "Live and rejoice while you are here, beyond the grave there's naught to fear." It's strange that, despite this fact, he has become a sculptor of the Beyond, portraying angels
, dying lions, and eagles, but that was not his original intention. As a young man he considered himself a kind of nephew to Michelangelo.