Erich Remarque: The Black Obelisk

Passably! The day seems to be dripping with sarcasm. First Heinrich and now Eduard. But we will fight for the goulash even if it takes an hour—it’s the best dish on the Walhalla’s menu.

But Eduard seems to be not only a poet but a mind reader as well. “No point in waiting,” he says. “We never have enough goulash, we always run out of it early. Or would you like to try a German beefsteak? You can have it here at the counter.”

“I’d rather be dead,” I say. “We’ll get goulash even if we have to cut you up.”

“Really?” Eduard is all fat, skeptical triumph.

“Yes,” I reply and give him a second slap on the belly. “Come, Georg, here’s a table for us.”

“Where?” Eduard asks quickly.

“Where that gentleman is sitting, the one who looks like a fashion plate. Yes, the redhead over there with the elegant lady. There, the one who’s getting up and waving to us. My friend Willy, Eduard. Send a waiter. We want to order!”

Eduard emits a hissing sound behind us like a punctured tire. We go over to Willy.

The reason Eduard puts on this act is simple enough. Some time ago one could pay for meals at his place with coupons. One bought a book with ten tickets and thereby got the single meals somewhat cheaper. Eduard did this, at the time, to increase business. In the last weeks, however, the avalanche of the inflation has upset his calculations; if the first ticket Still bore some relation to the price of a meal, by the tenth the value had shrunk substantially. Eduard therefore decided to give up selling books of tickets. He was losing too much money. But here we had been clever. We found out about his plan in time and six weeks ago we invested the proceeds of a small war memorial in the wholesale purchase of tickets at the Walhalla. To keep Eduard from noticing what we were up to we employed a variety of people: the coffinmaker Wilke, the cemetery watchman Liebermann, our sculptor Kurt Bach, Willy, a few of our other friends and war comrades, and even Lisa. All of them bought books of tickets for us at the cashier’s desk. When Eduard gave up selling coupons he expected that in ten days they would all be used up; each book contained ten tickets, and he assumed that any sensible man would buy one book at a time. But we each had over thirty books in our possession. Two weeks later Eduard became uneasy when we continued to pay with coupons; at the end of four weeks he had a slight attack of panic. At that time we were already eating for half-price; at the end of six weeks for the price of ten cigarettes. Day after day we appeared and handed over our coupons. Eduard asked how many we still had; we replied evasively. He tried to block the coupons; at the next meal we brought a lawyer with us whom we had invited to share a Wiener schnitzel. After dinner the lawyer gave Eduard a lesson in the laws governing contracts and obligations—and paid for his meal with one of our coupons. Eduard’s lyricism took on a darker coloration. He proposed a compromise; we declined. He wrote a didactic poem on “Ill-gotten Gains,” and sent it to the daily paper. The editor showed it to us; it was sprinkled with malicious references to “gravediggers of the nation”; there were references, too, to tombstones and “Kroll the Shyster.” We invited our lawyer to share a pork cutlet with us at the Walhalla. He instructed Eduard in the concept of public slander and its consequences—and paid once more with one of our coupons. Eduard, who was formerly a simple floral lyricist, began now to write hymns of hate. But that was all he could do; the battie rages on uninterruptedly. Eduard is in daily hope that our supply will be exhausted; he does not know that we still have tickets for over seven months.

Willy rises. He is wearing a new dark green suit of first-rate material in which he looks like a redheaded tree toad. His tie is adorned with a pearl and on the index finger of his right hand he is wearing a heavy seal ring. Five years ago he was assistant to our company cook. He is the same age as I—twenty-five.

“May I present my friends and former buddies?” Willy asks. “Georg Kroll and Ludwig Bodmer—Mademoiselle Renée de la Tour of the Moulin Rouge in Paris.”

Renée de la Tour nods in a reserved but not unfriendly way. We stare at Willy. Willy stares back proudly. “Sit down, gentlemen,” he says. “I assume Eduard is trying to keep you from eating here. The goulash is good, though it could stand a few more onions. Sit down, we’re happy to make room for you.”

We arrange ourselves at the table. Willy knows about our war with Eduard and follows it with the interest of a born gambler. “Waiter!” I shout.

A waiter who is waddling by on flat feet four paces away is suddenly stricken deaf. “Waiter!” I shout again.

“You’re a barbarian,” Georg Kroll says. “You’re insulting the man with his profession. Why did he take part in the 1918 revolution? Herr Ober! ”

I grin. It is true the German revolution of 1918 was the least bloody there has ever been. The revolutionaries were so terrified by themselves that they at once cried for help from the magnates and the generals of the former government to protect them from their own fit of courage. The others did it. Generously too. A bunch of revolutionaries were executed, the princes and officers received magnificent pensions so that they would have time to plan future riots, the officials received new titles—high-school teachers because academic counselors, school inspectors became educational counselors, waiters were given the right to be addressed as “ Ober ” or headwaiter, former secretaries of the party became excellencies, the Social Democratic minister of the army, in seventh heaven, was entitled to have real generals under him in his ministry—and the German revolution sank back into red plush, Gemütlichkeit , and a yearning for uniforms and commands.

“ Herr Ober! ” Georg repeats.

The waiter remains deaf. It is one of Eduard’s childish tricks; he tries to disconcert us by telling his waiters to ignore us.

Suddenly the dining room resounds to the thunder of a first-class Prussian barrack-room roar: “ Ober! You there, can’t you hear?” It has the instant effect of a trumpet call on an old war horse. The waiter stops as though shot in the back, and spins around; two others dash up to the table, somewhere there is the sound of heels clicking, a military-looking man at one of the nearby tables softly exclaims, “Bravo!”—and even Eduard Knobloch, with his dress coat streaming, rushes in to investigate this voice from the higher spheres. He knows that neither Georg nor I could sound so commanding.

We ourselves look around speechless at Renée de la Tour. She is sitting there, calm and maidenly, wholly uninvolved. But she is the only one who could have shouted—we know Willy’s voice.

The waiter is standing at our table. “What may I do for you, gentlemen?”

“Noodle soup, goulash, and pie for two,” Georg replies.

“And be quick about it, otherwise well burst your eardrums, you slug.”

Eduard arrives. He can’t make out what is happening. He glances under the table. No one is hidden there, and a ghost could hardly roar like that. Nor could we, as he knows. He suspects a trick of some sort. “I must urgently insist,” he says finally, “that such an uproar must not occur in my establishment.”

No one replies. We just look at him with empty eyes. Renée de la Tour is powdering her nose. Eduard turns around and departs.

“Innkeeper! Step over here!” The same thunderous voice suddenly summons him.

Eduard whirls around and stares at us. We still have the same empty smile on our mugs. He fixes Renée de la Tour with his eye. “Did you just—?”