The Black Obelisk

by Erich Maria Remarque

  "Yes, what?" I say, suddenly feeling tears in my eyes without understanding why. "Did we have one?"

  "Who knows?"

  Isabelle gets up. Above us there is a rustling in the leaves. In the glowing light of the late sun I see that a bird has let fall its droppings on my jacket. Just about where the heart is. Isabelle sees it too, and doubles up with laughter. I use my handkerchief to wipe away the excrement of the sarcastic chaffinch. "You are my youth," I say. "I know that now. You are everything it ought to be. Also that one only recognizes it when it is slipping away."

  Is she slipping away from me? I think. What am I talking about? Have I, then, ever possessed her? And why should she slip away? Because she says so? Or because there is suddenly this cool, silent fear? She has said so much before and I have so often been afraid. "I love you, Isabelle," I say. "I love you more than I ever knew. It is like a wind that rises, and you think it is only a playful breeze and suddenly your heart bows down before it like a willow tree in a storm. I love you, heart of my heart, single quietude in all this confusion. I love you, you who can hear when the flowers are thirsty and when time is weary like a hunting dog in the evening. I love you and love streams out of me as though through the just-opened gate of an unknown garden. I do not altogether understand it and I am amazed at it and am still a little ashamed of my big words, but they tumble out of me and resound and do not ask my leave; someone whom I do not know is speaking out of me, and I do not know whether it is a fourth-class melodramatist or my heart, which is no longer afraid—"

  With a start Isabelle has stopped walking. We are in the same allee through which, that other time, she walked back naked in the night, but everything now is different. The allée is full of the red light of evening, full of unlived youth, of melancholy, and of a happiness that trembles between sobbing and jubilation. It is no longer an allée of trees; it is an avenue of unreal light, where trees bend toward each other like dark fans striving to contain it, a light we stand in as though we were almost weightless, soaked in it, like cakes on Sylvester's Eve drenched in rum until they are ready to fall apart. "You do love me?" Isabelle whispers.

  "I love you and I know I shall never love anyone else the way I love you because I shall never again be as I am at this moment, which is passing while I speak of it and which I cannot keep even if I were to give my life—"

  She looks at me with great, shining eyes. "Now at last you know!" she whispers. "Now at last you have felt it—the nameless happiness and the sadness and the dream and the double face! It is the rainbow, Rudolf, and you can walk across it, but if you have doubts you will fall! Do you believe that at last?"

  "Yes," I murmur, knowing that I believe it and that a moment ago I believed it too, and that I already did not quite believe it. The light is still strong, but at the edges it is already gray; dark patches push slowly forward and the contagion of thought breaks out again beneath them, just covered over, but not healed. The miracle has passed me by; it has touched but not changed me; I still have the same name and I know I will probably bear it to the end of my days; I am no phoenix; resurrection is not for me; I have tried to fly but I am tumbling like a dazzled, awkward rooster back to earth, back behind the barbed wires.

  "Don't be sad," Isabelle says, watching me.

  "I can't walk on the rainbow, Isabelle," I say. "But I should like to. Who can?"

  She brings her face close to my ear. "No one," she says.

  "No one? Not even you?"

  She shakes her head. "No one," she repeats. "But it's enough to have the longing."

  The light is rapidly becoming gray. Once before everything was like this, I think, but I cannot remember when. I feel Isabelle near me and suddenly I take her in my arms. We kiss as if we were desperate and accursed, like people being torn apart forever. "I have failed in everything," I say breathlessly. "I love you, Isabelle."

  "Quiet!" she whispers. "Don't speak!"

  The pale patch at the end of the allée begins to glow. We walk toward it and stop at the park gate. The sun has disappeared and the fields are colorless; but in contrast a mighty sunset hangs over the woods and the city looks as though its streets were burning.

  We stand for a time. "What arrogance," Isabelle says suddenly, "to believe that a life has a beginning and an end!"

  I do not immediately understand her. Behind us the garden is already settling itself for the night; but in front, beyond the iron lattice, a wild alchemy flames and seethes. A beginning and an end? I think, and then I comprehend her meaning; it is arrogant to try to isolate and define a tiny existence in this seething and hissing and to make our meaguer consciousness the judge of its own duration, whereas it is at most a snowflake briefly floating on its surface. Beginning and end, invented words for an invented concept of time and the vanity of an amoeba-like consciousness unwilling to be submerged in a greater one.

  "Isabelle," I say. "You sweet, beloved life, I think I have finally felt what love is! It is life, nothing but life, the highest reach of the wave toward the evening sky, toward the paling stars and toward itself—the reach that is always in vain, the mortal reach toward what is immortal—but sometimes Heaven bends down to the wave and they meet for an instant and then it is no longer piracy on the one hand and rejection on the other, no longer lack and superfluity and the falsification of the poets, it is—"

  I break off. "I don't know what I'm saying," I tell her. "It's like a rushing stream and perhaps part of it is lies, but if so they are lies because words are deceptive and like cups used to catch a fountain—but you, you will understand me even without words; it is so new for me I can't express it; I didn't know that even my breath can love and my nails can love and even my death, and to hell with how long it lasts and whether I can hold on to it or express it—"

  "I understand," Isabelle says.

  "You understand?"

  She nods with sparkling eyes. "I was worried about you, Rudolf."

  Why should she be worried about me? I wonder. After all, I'm not sick. "Worried?" I say. "Why worry about me?"

  "Worried," she repeats. "But now I'm not any more. Farewell, Rudolf."

  I look at her and hold her hands tight. "Why do you want to go? Have I said something wrong?"

  She shakes her head and tries to free her hands. "Yes, I have!" I say. "It was false! It was arrogant, it was words, it was a speech—"

  "Don't spoil it, Rudolf! Why do you always have to spoil the things you want the minute you have them?"

  "Yes," I say. "Why?"

  "The fire without smoke or ashes. Don't spoil it. Farewell, Rudolf."

  What is this? I think. It is like a play, but it cannot be one! Is this farewell? But we have often said farewell, every evening. I hold Isabelle tight. "We'll stay together," I say.

  She nods and lays her head on my shoulder and I suddenly feel her crying. "Why are you crying?" I ask. "After all, we're happy!"

  "Yes," she says and kisses me and frees herself. "Good-by, Rudolf."

  "Why are you saying good-by? This is not a leave-taking! I'll come again tomorrow."

  She looks at me. "Oh, Rudolf," she says as though again there were something she could not make clear to me. "How is one ever to be able to die when one cannot say good-by?"

  "Yes," I say. "How? I don't understand that either. Neither the one nor the other."

  We are standing in front of the pavilion where she lives. No one is in the hallway. A bright scarf is lying on one of the cane chairs. "Come," Isabelle says suddenly.

  I hesitate for an instant, but now I cannot say no again and so I follow her upstairs. She walks into her room without looking around. I stand in the doorway. With a quick gesture she kicks off her light gold shoes and lays herself on the bed. "Come, Rudolf!" she says.

  I sit down beside her. I do not want to disappoint her again, but I do not know what to do nor what I am to say if a nurse or Wernicke comes in. "Come," Isabelle says.

  I lean back and she lays herself in my arms. "At last," she murmurs, "Rud
olf." And after a few deep breaths she falls asleep.

  The room grows dark. The window is pale in the oncoming night. I hear Isabelle's breath and now and again murmurs from the next room. Suddenly she wakes with a start. She thrusts me from her and I feel her body go rigid. She holds her breath. "It is I," I say. 'I, Rudolf."

  "Who?"

  "I, Rudolf. I have stayed with you."

  "You have slept here?"

  Her voice has changed. It is high and breathless. "I have stayed here," I say.

  "Go!" she whispers. "Go at once!"

  I do not know whether she recognizes me. "Where is the light?" I ask.

  "No light! No light! Go! Go!"

  I stand up and feel my way to the door. "Don't be afraid, Isabelle," I say.

  She twists about on the bed as though trying to pull the blankets over her. "Do go!" she whispers in her high, altered voice. "Otherwise she'll see you, Ralph! Quick!"

  I close the door behind me and go down the stairs. The night nurse is sitting in the hall. She knows I have permission to visit Isabelle. "Is she quiet?" she asks.

  I nod and walk across the garden to the gate through which the sick and the well come and go. What was that now? I think. Ralph, who can he be? She has never called me that before. And why did she think I must not be seen? I have often been in her room in the evening.

  I walk down toward the city. Love, I think, and my high-flown speeches recur to me. I feel an almost unbearable longing and a faint horror and something like a desire to escape. I walk faster and faster toward the city with its lights, its warmth, its vulgarity, its misery, its commonplaceness, and its healthy revulsion against secrets and chaos, whatever names they may go by....

  During the night I am awakened by voices. I open the window and see Sergeant Major Knopf being carried home. It is the first time this has happened; he has always got back under his own power even when schnaps was running out of his eyes. He is groaning loudly. Lights go on in a few windows.

  "Damned drunkard!" a voice screeches from one of them. It is the widow Konersmann, who has been lying in wait there. She has nothing to do and is the neighborhood snoop. I have had reason to suspect that she is spying on Georg and Lisa too.

  "Shut your trap!" an anonymous hero answers from the dark street.

  I don't know whether he knows the widow Konersmann. In any case, after a few seconds of silent indignation such a deluge of abuse descends upon him, upon Knopf, upon the customs of the city, of the country, and of humanity that the Street re-echoes.

  Finally the widow stops. Her last words are that Hinden-burg, the bishop, the police, and the employer of the unknown hero will be informed. "Shut your trap, you disgusting old hag!" replies the man, who seems, under cover of darkness, to possess unusual staying power. "Herr Knopf is seriously ill. I wish it was you."

  The widow immediately bursts forth again with redoubled energy, a thing no one would have thought possible. With the aid of a pocket flashlight she is trying to identify the malefactor from her window, hut the beam is too weak. "I know who you are!" she screeches. "You are Heinrich Brüggemann! Imprisonment is what you'll get for insulting a helpless widow, you murderer! And as for your mother—"

  I stop listening. The widow has a good audience. Almost all the windows are open now. Grunts and applause come from them. I go downstairs.

  Knopf is just being brought into the courtyard. He is white, perspiration is running down his face, and the Nietzsche mustache hangs moistly over his lips. With a scream he suddenly frees himself, reels forward a few steps, and unexpectedly springs at the obelisk. He embraces it with both arms and legs like a frog, presses himself against the granite and howls.

  I look around. Behind me stands Georg in his purple pajamas, behind him old Frau Kroll without her teeth, in a blue bathrobe, with curling papers in her hair, and behind her Heinrich, who, to my astonishment, is in pajamas without either steel helmet or decorations. However, the pajamas are striped in the Prussian colors, black and white.

  "What's the trouble?" Georg asks. "Delirium tremens? Again?"

  Knopf has already had it a few times. He saw white elephants coming out of the wall and airships that go through keyholes. "Worse," says the man who has held his ground against the widow Konersmann. It is in fact Heinrich Brüggemann, the plumber. "His liver and kidneys. He thinks they have burst."

  "Why are you bringing him here then? Why not to St. Mary's Hospital?"

  "He won't go to the hospital."

  The Knopf family appear. In front Frau Knopf, behind her the three daughters, all four rumpled, sleepy, and terrified. Knopf howls aloud under a new attack. "Have you telephoned for a doctor?" Georg asks.

  "Not yet. We had our hands full getting him here. He wanted to jump into the river."

  The four female heads form a mourning chorus around the sergeant major. Heinrich, too, has gone up to him and is trying to persuade him as a man, a comrade, a soldier, and a German to let go of the obelisk and go to bed, especially since the obelisk is swaying under Knopfs weight. Not only is Knopf in danger from the obelisk, Heinrich explains, but. the firm would have to hold him responsible if anything happened to it. It is costly, highly polished SS granite and will certainly be damaged if it falls.

  Knopf cannot understand him; with wide-open eyes he is whinnying like a horse who has seen a ghost. I hear Georg in the office telephoning for a doctor. Lisa enters the courtyard in a slightly rumpled evening dress of white satin. She is in blooming health and smells strongly of kümmel. "Cordial greetings from Gerda," she says to me. "She wants you to show up some time."

  At this instant a pair of lovers shoot at a gallop from behind the crosses and out of the courtyard. Wilke appears in raincoat and nightgown; Kurt Bach, the other freethinker, follows in black pajamas with a Russian blouse and belt. Knopf continues to howl.

  Thank God it is not far to the hospital. The doctor appears shortly. The situation is hurriedly explained to him. It is impossible to pry Knopf loose from the obelisk. And so his comrades pull down his trousers far enough for his skinny rear cheeks to be bared. The doctor, accustomed to difficult situations by his war experience, swabs Knopf with cotton dipped in alcohol, hands Georg a small flashlight, and drives a hypodermic into Knopfs brilliantly lighted posterior. Knopf half looks around, lets go a resounding fart, and slides down from the obelisk. The doctor has jumped back as though Knopf had shot him. Knopfs escorts pick him up. He is still holding on to the foot of the obelisk with his hands, but his resistance is broken. I understand why he rushed to the obelisk in his dread; he has spent beautiful, carefree moments there free of renal colic.

  They carry him into the house. "It was to be expected," Georg says to Brüggemann. "How did it happen?"

  Brüggemann shakes his head. "I've no idea. He had just won a bet against a man from Münster. Named correctly a schnaps from Spatenbrau and one from Blume's Restaurant. The man from Münster brought them in his car. I was umpire. Then while the man from Münster is fiddling with his wallet, Knopf suddenly gets white as a sheet and begins to sweat. Right after that he is on the floor writhing and vomiting and howling. You've seen the rest. And do you know the worst of it? In all the confusion that fellow from Münster ran off without paying the bet. None of us knows him and in the excitement we didn't get his license number."

  "That is indeed horrible," Georg says.

  "Fate is what I'd call it."

  "Fate," I remark. "If you want to avoid your fate, Herr Brüggemann, then don't go back by way of Hackenstrasse. The widow Konersmann is checking the passers-by; she has borrowed a strong flashlight and she has that in one hand and a beer bottle in the other. Isn't that right, Lisa?"

  Lisa nods energetically. "It's a full bottle. If she cracks you on the skull with that, you'll be cooled off for good."

  "Damn it!" Brüggemann says. "How can I get out? Is this a blind alley?"

  "Fortunately not," I reply. "You can work your way through the back gardens to Bleibtreustrasse. I advise you to leav
e soon; it's getting light."

  Brüggemann disappears, Heinrich Kroll is examining the obelisk for damage, then he likewise disappears. "Such is man," Wilke says rather platitudinously, nodding up at Knopfs windows and over at the garden through which Brüggemann is creeping. Then he starts to move up the stairs again to his workshop. Apparently he is sleeping there tonight and not working.