Erich Remarque - The Black Obelisk

Eyes!” I say. “Day after tomorrow he won’t trust them—when he comes home and finds the obelisk gone. His world, too, will collapse.”

“Is yours collapsing?” Georg asks.

“Daily,” I reply. “How else could one live?”

Two hours before train time we hear tramping feet outside and the sound of voices raised in song.

Then at once, a four-part harmony rises from the street: “Holy night, or pour the peace of Heaven upon this heart—”

We go to the window. On the street stands Bodo Ledderhose’s club. “What’s this all about?” I ask. “Turn on the light, Georg!”

In the glow falling from our window, we recognize Bodo. “It’s about you,” Georg says. “A farewell song from your club. Don’t forget you’re a member still.”

“Grant the weary pilgrim peace, soothing ointment for his pain—” they roll on loudly.

Windows fly open. “Quiet!” Widow Konersmann screams. “It’s midnight, you drunken dogs!”

“Brightly shine the stars on high like lamps in the distant blue—”

Lisa appears in her window and bows. She thinks the song is for her.

In short order the police arrive. “Disperse!” an authoritative voice commands.

The police have changed with the deflation. They have grown strict and energetic. The old Prussian spirit is back again. Every civilian is a permanent recruit.

“Disturbance of the peace!” growls the uniformed music hater.

“Arrest them!” howls the widow Konersmann.

Bodo’s club consists of him and twenty steadfast singers. Opposed to them stand two policemen. “Bodo,” I shout in alarm, “don’t lay hands on them! Don’t defend yourselves! Otherwise you’ll be in jail for years!”

Bodo makes a reassuring gesture and goes on singing wide-mouthed: “Might I but depart with thee—on thy way to Heaven.”

“Quiet, we want to sleep!” the widow Konersmann screams.

“Hey there!” Lisa shouts to the policemen. “Just leave the singers alone! Why aren’t you out catching thieves?”

The policemen are perplexed. They order everyone to accompany them to the police station, but no one moves. Bodo begins the second stanza. The policemen finally do the best they can—each arrests one of the singers. “Don’t defend yourselves!” I shout. “It’s resisting the law!

The singers offer no resistance. They let themselves be led away. The rest go on singing as though nothing had happened. The station is not far. The police come back on the run and arrest two more. The others go on singing, but they have become very weak in first tenors. The police are making their arrests from the right; on the third trip. Willy is taken away and with that the first tenors are silenced. We hand bottles of beer out of the window. “Hold out, Bodo!” I say.

“Don’t worry! To the last man!”

The police come back and arrest two second tenors. We have no more beer and begin handing out our schnaps. Ten minutes later only the basses are left. They stand there, disregarding the arrests. I have read somewhere that herds of walruses will remain unconcerned in just this way while hunters bludgeon their neighbors to death—and I have seen whole nations behave the same way in war.

After another fifteen minutes Bodo Ledderhose is standing there alone. The angry, sweating policemen come galloping up for the last time. They take Bodo between them. We follow him to the station. Bodo goes on humming alone. “Beethoven,” he says briefly and starts humming again, a lonely musical bee.

But suddenly it is as though aeolian harps were accompanying him from afar. We prick up our ears. It sounds like a miracle—angel voices are actually accompanying him—angels in first and second tenor and in both basses. They weave their flattering and deceptive strains around Bodo and grow clearer as we advance. When we round the church, we can actually understand the fleeting, disembodied voices. They are singing: “Holy night, oh pour the peace of Heaven—” at the next corner we recognize whence they come—from the police station, where Bodo’s arrested friends are unconcernedly going on with their song. Bodo takes his place as leader, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and continues: “Grant the weary pilgrim peace—”

“Herr Kroll, what’s the meaning of this?” the desk sergeant asks in perplexity.

“It is the power of music,” Georg replies. “A farewell song for a man who is going out into the wide world. It’s harmless and really ought to be encouraged.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

“It is disturbance of the peace,” protests one of the men who made the arrests.

“Would it have been disturbance of the peace if they had been singing ‘ Deutschland, Deutschland über alles ’ ? ” I ask.

“That would have been different!”

“Throw them out!” shouts the sergeant. “But they’re to keep quiet from now on.”

“They’ll keep quiet. You’re not a Prussian, are you?”

“Franconian.”

“That’s what I thought,” Georg says.

We are at the station. It is windy and there is no one on the platform but us. “You will visit me, Georg,” I say. “I’ll do all I possibly can to meet the women of your dreams. Two or three will be there for you if you come to visit me.”

“I’ll come.”

I know he will not. “You owe it to your tuxedo at least,” I say. “Where else could you wear it?”

“That’s true.”

The train bores through the darkness with two glowing eyes. “Keep the colors flying, Georg! We’re immortal you know.”

“So we are. And you, don’t let them get you down. You’ve been saved so often it’s your duty to survive.”

“Sure,” I say. “If only because of the others who weren’t saved.”

“Nonsense. Simply because you’re alive.”

The train roars into the station as though five hundred people were waiting for it. But only I am waiting. I look for a compartment and get in. The compartment smells of sleep and people. I open the window in the passageway and lean out. “When you give up something, you don’t have to lose it,” Georg says. “Only idiots think that.”

“Who’s talking about losing?” I reply as the train begins to move. “Since we lose in the end anyway, we can give ourselves the luxury of winning beforehand like the spotted monkeys of the forest.”

“Do they always win?”

“Yes—because they don’t know what winning is.”

The train is already rolling. I feel Georg’s hand. It is too small and too soft and there is an unhealed scar on it from the Battle of the Pissoir . The train moves faster, Georg is left behind and suddenly he is older and paler than I thought. Now I can only see his pale hand and pale head and then nothing more but the sky and the fleeing dark.

I go into the compartment. A commercial traveler with eyeglasses is wheezing in one corner; a woodsman in another. In the third a fat man with a mustache is snoring; in the fourth a woman with sagging cheeks and a hat askew on her head is emitting quavering sighs.

I feel the sharp hunger of sorrow and open my bag, which is in the luggage net. Frau Kroll has provided me with sandwiches for the trip. I fumble for them unsuccessfully and get the bag down out of the net. The quavering woman with the tilted hat wakes up, looks around furiously and goes back challengingly to her quavers. I see now why I could not find the sandwiches. Georg’s tuxedo lies on top of them. Very likely he put it in my bag while I was selling the obelisk. I look at the black cloth for a while, then I get out the sandwiches and begin to eat. They are admirable sandwiches. The whole compartment wakes up for a moment at the smell of bread and liverwurst. I pay no attention and go on eating. Then I lean back in my seat and look out into the darkness, where now and again lights fly past, and I think of Georg and the tuxedo and then I think of Isabella and Hermann Lotz and of the obelisk that was pissed on and that saved the firm in the end, and finally I think of nothing at all.