The Black Obelisk

by Erich Maria Remarque

  "Neither had I. And what situation?"

  "Then it's all right." He laughs. "Besides, it wouldn't have been bad for you at all."

  "Really?" I reply. "Up to now I had thought that only Bodendiek was God's representative here. Now we have you as well. You know exactly what's bad and what's good, eh?"

  Wernicke is silent for a moment. "So it really happened," he says presently. "Well, what does it matter? Too bad I couldn't have listened to you two! Those must have been fine mooncalf dialogues! Take a cigar. Have you noticed that it's autumn?"

  "Yes," I say. "That's something I can agree with you about."

  Wernicke offers me the cigar box. I take one just in order not to hear, if I refuse, that this is a further sign of being in love. I am suddenly so miserable I want to vomit. Nevertheless, I light the cigar.

  "I owe you an explanation," Wernicke says. "Her mother! She has been here twice. She finally broke down. Husband died early; mother pretty, young; friend of the family, with whom the daughter was obviously infatuated; mother and family friend careless, daughter jealous, surprises them, perhaps she has been observing them for some time—you understand?"

  "No," I say. All this is as repulsive to me as Wernicke's stinking cigar.

  "Well then, we've got that far," Wernicke continues with gusto. "Daughter hates mother for it, revulsion complex, escapes through a splitting of personality—typical flight from reality and recourse to a dream life. Mother then marries the family friend, which brings the whole thing to a crisis—understand now?"

  "No."

  "But it's so simple," Wernicke says impatiently. "The only hard thing was to get to the heart of the matter, but now—" He rubs his hands. "Besides, by good fortune the other man, the former family friend called Ralph or Rudolf or something of the sort, is no longer in the way. Divorced three months ago, killed in the last couple of weeks in an automobile accident. So the cause has been eliminated, the road is free—now at last you must catch on?"

  "Yes," I say and would like to slap a chloroform mask oh the cheerful scientist's mouth.

  "Well, you see! Now we have to face the solution. Suddenly the mother is no longer a rival, the meeting can happen, carefully prepared for—I've been working on it for a week already and everything's going well; you've seen for yourself, Fraulein Terhoven went to devotion this evening—"

  "You mean you've converted her? You, the atheist, and not Bodendiek?"

  "Nonsense!" Wernicke says, irritated by my dullness. "That's not the point at all! I mean that she has become more open, more accessible, freer—didn't you notice that the last time you were here?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, you see!" Wernicke rubs his hands again. "Coming after the first severe shock, that was a very cheering result—"

  "Was the shock, too, a result of your treatment?"

  "It was in part."

  I think of Isabelle in her room. "Congratulations," I say.

  In his absorption Wernicke does not notice my irony. "The first short meeting and the treatment naturally brought everything back; that was the intention, of course—but since then —I have great hopes! You understand that right now I don't want anything to distract—"

  "I understand. You don't want me."

  Wernicke nods. "I knew you would understand! You, too, have a certain amount of scientific curiosity. For a time you were useful, but now—what's wrong with you? Are you too hot?"

  "It's the cigar. Too strong."

  "On the contrary!" the tireless scientist explains. "These Brazilians look strong—but they're the mildest of all."

  That's true of many other things, I think, laying the weed aside.

  "The human mind!" Wernicke says enthusiastically. "When I was young I wanted to be a sailor and adventurer and explorer of primeval forests—ridiculous! The greatest adventure lies here!" He taps his forehead. "I guess I explained that to you once before."

  "Yes," I say. "Often."

  The green husks of the chestnuts rustle under my feet. In love like a mooncalf! I think. What does that fact-finding beetle mean? If it were only as simple as that! I walk to the gate and almost bump into a woman coming slowly from the opposite direction. She is wearing a fur stole; she does not belong to the institution. I see a pale, faded face in the darkness, and the scent of perfume lingers behind her. "Who was that?" I ask the watchman at the exit.

  "Someone to see Dr. Wernicke. Been here a couple of times before. I believe she has a patient here."

  Her mother, I think, hoping it is not true. I stop outside and stare up at the buildings. A sudden rage seizes me, anger at having been ridiculous and then a contemptible self-pity—but in the end all that is left is helplessness. I lean against a chestnut tree and feel the cool trunk and do not know what to do or what I want.

  I go on and as I walk I feel hetter. Let them talk, Isabelle, I think, let them laugh at us as mooncalves. You sweet, beloved life, flying untrammeled, walking safely where others sink, skimming where others tramp in high boots, but caught and bleeding in webs and on boundaries the others cannot see, what do they want of you? Why must they so greedily pull you back into their world, into our world; why won't they permit you your butterfly existence beyond cause and effect and time and death? Is it jealousy? Is it insensibility? Or is it true, as Wernicke says, that he must rescue you from something worse, from nameless fears that would come, fiercer than those that he himself conjured up, and finally from decline into toadlike idiocy? But is he sure he can? Is he sure that he will not break you with his attempts at rescue or force you more quickly into what he wants to save you from? Who knows? What does this butterfly collector, this scientist, know of flying, of the wind, or the dangers and ecstasies of the days and nights outside space and time? Does he know the future? Has he drunk the moon? Does he know that plants scream? He laughs at that. For him it is all just a retreat reaction caused by a brutal experience. But is he a prophet who can see in advance what is going to happen? Is he God to know what must happen? What did he know about me? That it would be quite all right if I were a little in love? But what do I myself know about that? It bursts forth and streams and has no end; what intimation did I have of it? How can one be so devoted to someone else? Didn't I myself constantly reject it during those weeks that are now as unattainable as the sunset on the far horizon? But why do I lament? What am I afraid of? May not everything turn out all right and Isabelle be cured and—

  There I stop short. What then? Will she not leave? And then her mother will be part of the picture, with a fur stole, with discreet perfume, with relations in the background and ambitions for her daughter. Isn't she lost to me, somebody who can't even scrape together enough money to buy a suit? And is that perhaps the reason I am so confused? Out of stupid egoism—and all the rest is just decoration?

  I step into a cellar café. A few chauffeurs are sitting there; behind the buffet in a wavy mirror reflects my haggard face, and in front of me in a glass case lie a half-dozen dry rolls and some sardines that have turned up their tails with age. I drink some schnaps and felt as though my stomach had a deep, tearing hole in it. I eat the rolls and sardines and some old, cracked Swiss cheese; it tastes awful, but I stuff it into me and then devour some sausages that are so red they can almost whinny, and I feel more and more unhappy and more and more hungry and as if I could eat the whole buffet.

  "Boy, you have a wonderful appetite," says the owner.

  "Yes," I say. "Have you anything else?"

  "Pea soup. Thick pea soup; if you just break some bread into it—"

  "All right, give me the pea soup."

  I devour the pea soup, and the owner brings me as a gift another slice of bread with lard on it. I polish it off too, and am hungrier and more unhappy than before. The chauffeurs begin to take an interest in me. "I once knew a man who could eat thirty hard-boiled eggs at a sitting," one of them says.

  "That's impossible. He would die; that's been proved scientifically."

  I stare at the scientist angrily.
"Have you seen it happen?" I ask.

  "It's a fact," he replies.

  "It's not a fact at all. The only thing that has been scientifically proved is that chauffeurs die young."

  "Why would that be?"

  "Because of the gasoline fumes. Slow poisoning." The owner appears with a kind of Italian salad. A sporting interest 'has prevailed over his sleepiness. Where he got the salad and mayonnaise is a puzzle. Surprisingly, it is fresh. Perhaps it is part of his own supper that he has sacrificed. I consume it too, and leave—with a burning stomach that still feels empty—and no whit comforted.

  The streets are gray and dimly lighted. There are beggars everywhere. They are not the familiar beggars of other times—now they are amputees and the dispossessed and the unemployed and quiet old people with faces that look as though they were made of rumpled, colorless paper. I am suddenly ashamed that I have eaten so thoughtlessly. If I had given what I have devoured to two or three of these people, they would be filled for a night and I would be no hungrier than I am. I take what money I have with me out of my pocket and give it away. It is not much and I am not impoverishing myself; by ten o'clock tomorrow morning, when the dollar is announced, it will have lost a quarter of its worth. This fall the German mark has had tenfold galloping consumption. The beggars know it and disappear immediately, since every minute is costly; the price of soup can rise several million marks in an hour. It all depends on whether the proprietor has to market tomorrow or not—and also on whether he is businesslike or himself a victim. If he is a victim, then he is manna for the smaller victims because he raises his prices too late.

  I walk on. Some people are coming out of the city hospital. They are clustered around a woman whose right arm is in a sling. A smell of disinfectants comes from her. The hospital stands in the darkness like a mountain of light. Almost all the windows are bright; every room seems to be occupied. In the inflation people die fast. That's something we have noticed too.

  In Grossestrasse I go to a delicatessen store that is usually open after the official closing time. We have made a deal with the woman who owns it. She received a medium-sized headstone for her husband, and we in return have a credit of six dollars at the exchange rate of September 2. Trading has long since become the style. People trade old beds for canaries and knickknacks, jewelry for potatoes, china for sausages, furniture for bread, pianos for hams, old razor blades for vegetable parings, old furs for remade military blouses, and the possessions of the dead for food. Four weeks ago Georg had a chance to acquire an almost new tuxedo in exchange for a broken marble column and foundation. He gave it up with a heavy heart simply because he is superstitious and believes that in a dead man's possessions something of the departed lingers for a long time. The widow explained to him that she had had the tuxedo chemically cleaned; therefore it was really completely new and one could assume that the chlorine fumes had driven the departed out of every seam. Georg was sorely tempted, for the tuxedo fitted him, but in the end he gave it up.

  I press the latch of the door, but it is locked. Naturally, I think, staring hungrily at the display in the window. At last I walk wearily homeward. In the courtyard stand six small sandstone plaques, still virginal, no names engraved on them. Kurt Bach has turned them out. It is really a prostitution of his talent, being considered stonemason's work, but at the moment we have no commissions for dying lions or war memorials in bas-relief—therefore Kurt has been turning out a supply of very small inexpensive plaques, which we can always use—especially in the fall when, as in the spring, we can count on a large number of deaths. Grippe, hunger, bad food, and lowered resistance will see to that.

  The sewing machines behind Knopf's door hum quietly. Light from the living room where the mourning clothes are being sewn shines through the glass. Old Knopf's window is dark. Probably he is already dead. We ought to put the black obelisk on his grave, I think, like a sinister stone finger pointing from earth toward heaven. For Knopf it would be a second home, and two generations of Krolls have failed to sell the dark accuser.

  I go into the office. "Come in here!" Georg shouts from his room.

  I open the door and stop in amazement. Georg is sitting in his easy chair, with illustrated magazines strewn in front of him as usual. The Reading Club of the Elegant World, to which he subscribes, has just supplied him with new provender. But that is not all—he is wearing a tuxedo with a starched shirt and a white vest to boot, a perfect magazine version of the fashionable bachelor. "After all!" I say. "You disregarded the warnings of instinct and succumbed to worldly self-indulgence. The widow's tuxedo!"

  "Not at all!" Georg preens himself complacently. "What you see is evidence of woman's superiority in the matter of inspiration. It is a different tuxedo. The widow traded hers to a tailor for this one, and so I get paid without injury to my sensibilities. Look at this—the widow's tuxedo was lined in satin—this one has pure silk. It fits me better, too, under the arms. The price was the same in gold marks because of the inflation; the suit is more elegant. Thus, by exception, sensibility has paid out."

  I look at him. The tuxedo is good but not altogether new. I avoid injuring Georg's feelings by pointing out that this suit in all likelikhood comes from a dead man too. What, after all, doesn't come from the dead? Our language, our customs, our knowledge, our despair—everything. During the war, especially in the last year, Georg wore so many dead men's uniforms, sometimes still showing faded bloodstains and mended bullet holes, that his present disinclination is more than neurotic sensibility—it is rebellion and the wish for peace. For him peace means, among other things, not to have to wear dead men's clothes.

  "What are the movie actresses up to—Henny Porten, Erika Morena, and the incomparable Lia de Putti?" I ask.

  "They have the same problems we do!" Georg explains. "To turn their money into commodities as fast as possible—cars, furs, tiaras, dogs, houses, stocks, and film productions—only it's easier for them than for us."

  He glances lovingly at a picture of a Hollywood party. It is a ball of incomparable elegance. The gentlemen are wearing tuxedos like Georg's or tails. "When are you going to get a dress suit?" I ask.

  "After I've been to my first ball in this tuxedo. I'll skip off to Berlin for that! For three days! Some time when the inflation is over and money is money again and not water. Meanwhile, I'm making preparations, as you see."

  "You still need patent-leather shoes," I say, irritated to my own surprise at this self-satisfied man of the world.

  Georg takes the gold twenty-mark piece out of his vest pocket, tosses it into the air, catches it, and puts it back without a word. I watch him with gnawing envy. There he sits, with no cares to speak of, in his vest pocket a cigar that will not taste like gall, as Wernicke's Brazilian did, across the street lives Lisa, who is infatuated with him simply because his family were businessmen when her father was a day laborer. She idolized him when he was a child wearing a white collar and a sailor cap on his curls while she traipsed about in a dress made from one of her mother's old skirts—and this admiration has endured. Georg need do nothing more; his glory is secure. I don't believe Lisa even knows he is bald —for her he is still the merchant prince in a sailor suit.

  "You're lucky," I say.

  "I deserve to be," Georg replies, closing the copies of the reading circle Modernitas. Then he takes a box of sprats from the window seat and points to a half-loaf and a piece of butter. "How about a simple supper and a glance at the night life of a medium-sized city?"

  They are the same sort of sprats that made my mouth water when I saw them in the store in Grossestrasse. Now I can't bear the sight of them. "You amaze me," I say. "Why are you eating here? Why aren't you dining on caviar and sea food in the former Hotel Hohenzollera, now the Reichs-hof?"

  "I love contrast," Georg replies. "How else could I exist, a tombstone dealer in a small city with a yearning for the great world?"

  He stands in full splendor at the window. Suddenly from across the street conies a husky cr
y of admiration. Georg turns full face, his hands in his trouser pockets to show the white vest to full advantage. Lisa dissolves, as far as that is possible for her. She draws her kimono around her, executes a kind of Arabian dance, unwraps herself, suddenly stands naked and dark, silhouetted in front of her lamp, throws the kimono on again, puts the lamp at her side and is once more like a gardenia in her greedy mouth. Georg accepts this homage like a pasha and grants me a eunuch's share. In a single moment he has consolidated for years to come the position of the lad in the sailor suit who so impressed the tattered girl. Tuxedos are nothing new to Lisa, who is at home among the profiteers in the Red Mill; but Georg's, of course is something entirely different. Pure gold. "You're lucky," I say again. "And how easy! Riesenfeld could burst a blood vessel, compose poems, and ruin his granite works without accomplishing what you have done by just being a mannequin."