The Black Obelisk (18 page)

"What is there for dinner, Eduard?" I ask impatiently. "Or do we have to give you our whole life story in installments first?"

"I'll go and see myself," Eduard says gallantly to Gerda. "For such a guest! The magic of the sawdust ring! Ah! Forgive Herr Bodmer's erratic behavior. He grew up during the war with bogtrotters and got his education from his sergeant, a hysterical postman."

He waddles away. "A fine figure of a man," Gerda says. "Is he married?"

"He was, but his wife ran away from him because he is so stingy."

Gerda runs her fingers over the damask tablecloth. "She must have been a silly woman," she says dreamily. "I like thrifty people. They save their money."

"That's the silliest thing you can do in the inflation."

"Of course you have to invest it wisely." Gerda looks at her knife and fork of heavy silver plate. "I imagine your friend here does that all right—even if he is a poet."

I look at her in some amazement. "That may be," I say. "But others get no advantage from it. Least of all his wife. He made her work like a slave from morning till night. Having a wife means to Eduard having someone to work for him for nothing."

Gerda smiles ambiguously like the Mona Lisa. "Every safe has its combination, don't you know that, baby?"

I stare at her. What's going on here? I wonder. Is this the same girl who was dining with me last night on sandwiches and milk for a modest five thousand marks, admiring the view and talking about the magic of the simple life? "Eduard is fat, dirty, and incurably stingy," I announce firmly. "I've known him for years."

Riesenfeld, that expert on women, has told me once that this combination would scare off any woman. But Gerda seems not to be an ordinary woman. She examines the big chandeliers hanging from the ceiling like transparent stalactites, and sticks to her dream. "Probably he needs someone to take care of him. Not like a hen of course! He seems to need someone who appreciates his good qualities."

I am now openly alarmed. Are my peaceful two weeks of happiness already slipping away? Why did I, fool that I am, have to drag Gerda here, to this place of silver and crystal? "Eduard has no good qualities," I say.

Gerda smiles again. "Every man has some. You just have to bring them out."

Fortunately at this moment the waiter Freidank appears, pompously bearing a 
pâté
 
on a silver platter. "What in the world is that?" I ask.

"Goose liver
pâté
"
Freidank announces haughtily.

"But it says potato soup on the menu!"

"This is the menu Herr Knobloch himself ordered," says Freidank, a former lance corporal in the Commissary Department, slicing two pieces—a thick one for Gerda, a thin one for me. "Or would you rather have potato soup according to your constitutional rights?" he inquires cordially. "It can be done."

Gerda laughs. Angered at Eduard's cheap attempt to win her with food, I am about to order potato soup when Gerda kicks me under the table. On top she graciously exchanges plates with me. "That's how it should be," she says to Freidank. "A man must always have the larger portion, don't you think?"

"Well, yes," Freidank stutters, suddenly confused. "At home—but here—" The former lance corporal doesn't know what to do. He has had orders from Eduard to give Gerda a generous slice but me a mere sliver and he has followed those orders. Now he sees the reverse happening and almost has a nervous breakdown; he must assume responsibility and doesn't know what to do. Prompt obedience to orders has been bred into our proud blood for centuries—but to decide something by one's self is another matter. Freidank does the one thing he knows: he looks about for his master, hoping for new orders.

Eduard appears. "Go ahead and serve, Freidank, what are you waiting for?"

I pick up my fork and quickly cut a piece of the
pate
in front of me, just as Freidank, true to his original orders, tries to change the plates. Freidank freezes. Gerda bursts into laughter. Eduard takes command like a general in the field, appraises the situation, pushes Freidank aside, cuts a second good-sized piece of
pate,
lays it with a gallant gesture in front of Gerda, and asks me in a bittersweet tone: '"Do you like it?"

"It's all right," I reply. "Too bad it's not goose liver."

"It is goose liver."

"It tastes like calf's liver."

"Have you ever in your life eaten goose liver?"

"Eduard," I reply, "I have eaten so much goose liver that I vomited it."

Eduard laughs through his nose. "Where?" he asks contemptuously.

"In France, during the advance, while I was being trained to be a man. We conquered a whole store full of goose liver. Strasbourg goose liver in tureens with black truffles from Peügord which are missing in yours. At that time you were peeling potatoes in the kitchen."

I do not go on to say that I got sick because we also found the owner of the store—a little old woman plastered in shreds on the remnant of the wall, her gray head torn off and stuck on a store hook as though impaled on the lance of some barbarian tribesman.

"And how do you like it?" Eduard asks Gerda in the melting tones of a frog squatting happily beside the dark abysses of melancholy.

"Fine," Gerda replies, going to work.

Eduard makes a courtly bow and withdraws like a dancing elephant. "You see," Gerda says beaming at me. "He isn't so stingy after all."

I put down my fork. "Listen, you circus wonder with your sawdust halo," I reply, "you see before you a man whose pride is still severely injured, to speak in Eduard's jargon, because he was left flat by a lady who ran off with a rich profiteer. Is it now your intention to pour boiling oil in the still unhealed wounds, to borrow Eduard's baroque prose again, by doing the same thing to me?"

Gerda laughs and goes on eating. "Don't talk nonsense, my pet," she commands with her mouth full. "And don't be an injured liverwurst. Make more money than the others if that's what's bothering you."

"Fine advice! How am I to make it? By magic?"

"The way the others do. They've managed somehow."

"Eduard inherited this hotel," I say bitterly.

"And Willy?"

"Willy is a profiteer."

"What is a profiteer?"

"A man who knows all the angles. Who deals in everything from herrings to steel shares. Who does business where he can with whom he can and how he can as long as he manages to stay out of jail."

"Well, there you seel" Gerda says, helping herself to the rest of the 
pâté
.

"Do you want me to be one?"

Gerda cracks a roll with her strong teeth. "Be one or don't just as you like. But don't get in a stew if you don't want to be one and the others do. Anyone can complain, my petl"

"That's right," I say, perplexed and suddenly very sober. A mass of soap bubbles suddenly seem to be bursting inside my skull. I look at Gerda. She has a damnably reasonable way of looking at things. "You're perfectly right, you know," I say.

"Of course I'm right. But just look what's coming! Do you think that can be for us?"

It is for us. A roast chicken and asparagus. A meal for munitions makers. Eduard supervises the serving himself. He lets Freidank carve. "The breast for madame," he commands.

"I'd rather have a leg," Gerda says.

"A leg and a piece of the breast for madame," Eduard directs gallantly.

"Go right ahead," Gerda replies, "You are a cavalier, Herr Knobloch!" I knew you were!"

Eduard smirks with self-satisfaction. I cannot understand why he is putting on this act. I can't believe he likes Gerda so much as to make her presents of this sort; more likely he is trying to snatch her away from me out of rage over our coupons. A retaliatory act of justice. "Freidank," I say. "Take this skeleton off my plate. I don't eat bones. Give me the other leg in return. Or is your chicken a one-legged victim of the war?"

Freidank looks at his master like a sheep dog. "That's the tastiest of all," Eduard explains. "The breast bones are very delicate to nibble."

"I'm no nibbler. I'm an eater."

Eduard shrugs his heavy shoulders and reluctantly gives me the other leg. "Wouldn't you rather have some salad?" he asks. "Asparagus is very injurious to drunkards."

"Give me the asparagus. I am a modern man with a strong tendency to self-destruction."

Eduard floats off like a rubber rhinoceros. Suddenly I have an inspiration. "Knobloch!" I roar after him in the thunderous tones of Renée de la Tour.

He whirls around as though struck in the back by a lance. "What's the meaning of that?" he asks me indignantly.

"What?"

"To roar like that."

"Roar? Who's roaring except you? Or don't you want Miss Schneider to have some salad? If not, why offer it to her?"

Eduard's eyes become enormous. One can see in them a monstrous suspicion growing into a certainty. "You—" he asks Gerda. "Was it you who called me?"

"If there is any salad, I'd like to have some," Gerda answers, not knowing what it is all about. Eduard continues to stand beside our table. Now he firmly believes that Gerda is Renée de la Tour's sister. I can see how he regrets that liver 
pâté
,
the chicken, and the asparagus. He feels that he has been horribly tricked. "It was Herr Bodmer," says Freidank, who has crept up. "I saw him."

But Freidank's words make no impression on Eduard. "Speak when you're spoken to, waiter," I say to him carelessly. "You should have learned that from the Prussians! On your way now—go on spilling goulash sauce down the necks of unsuspecting guests. And you, Eduard, since you're here, tell me whether this magnificant meal is a gift or are you going to want our coupons for it?"

Eduard looks as though he were about to have a stroke. "Hand over the coupons, you scoundrel," he says dully.

I tear them out and lay the bits of paper on the table. "Who's been playing the scoundrel here is open to question, you incapable Don Juan," I say.

Eduard does not pick up the coupons himself. "Freidank," he says, now almost voiceless with rage. "Throw this rubbish into the wastebasket."

"Wait," I say, reaching for the menu. "If we are going to pay, we are still entitled to dessert. What would you like, Gerda?
Rote grütze
or compote?"

"What do you recommend, Herr Knobloch?" asks Gerda, unaware of the drama going on inside Eduard.

Eduard makes a despairing gesture and departs. "Well then, compote!" I shout after him.

He jerks slightly and then goes on as though he were treading on eggs. Each second he expects to hear the drill sergeant's voice again. I hesitate and then decide against it, as a more effective tactic. "What's going on here all of a sudden?" Gerda asks.

"Nothing," I reply, dividing the chicken bones between us. "Nothing but a small illustration of the great Clausewitz's thesis on strategy: Attack when your opponent thinks he has won, and then at the point where he least expects it."

Gerda nods uncomprehendingly and begins to eat the compote that Freidank has rudely slapped down in front of us. I look at her thoughtfully and decide never to bring her to the Walhalla again, but from now on to follow Georg's iron rule: Never take a woman to a new place, then she won't insist on going there and won't run away from you.

It is night. I am leaning on the window sill of my room. The moon is shining, the heavy scent of lilacs drifts up from the garden. It's an hour since I came home from the Alstädter Hof. A pair of lovers flits along the street in the shadow of the moon and disappears into our garden. I do nothing about it; when you are not thirsty yourself you are generous toward others—and now the nights are irresistible. Just to prevent accidents, I have put signs on the two precious memorial crosses with the inscription "Warning! May fall! Avoid broken toes!" For some reason or other the lovers seem to prefer the crosses when the ground is wet; no doubt because they can hold onto them more firmly, although you would think the medium-sized monuments would do equally well. I had the notion of putting up another sign recommending them, but I gave it up. Sometimes Frau Kroll rises early and, for all her tolerance, she would box my ears for frivolity before I could explain to her that before the war I was a prudish fellow—a characteristic that disappeared during the defense of our beloved fatherland.

Suddenly I see a square black figure coming along through the moonlight. I freeze. It is Watzek, the horse butcher. He disappears into his house two hours ahead of time. Perhaps he has run out of nags; horseflesh is much in demand these days. I watch the window. It lights up, and Watzek's shadow wanders about. I wonder whether to tell Georg Kroll; but disturbing lovers is a thankless task and, besides, it may be that Watzek will go to sleep without noticing anything. That, however, does not seem to be happening. The butcher opens the window and stares right and left along the street. I hear him snort. He closes the shutters and after a while appears at the door with a chair in his hand, his butcher's knife in the leg of his boot. He sits down on the chair as though to await Lisa's return. I look at the clock; it is eleven thirty. The night is warm, and Watzek may sit there for hours. Lisa, on the other hand, has been with Georg for quite a while; the hoarse panting of love has already subsided. If she runs into the butcher's arms she will no doubt find some plausible explanation and he no doubt will be taken in. Just the same, it would be better if nothing happened.