The Black Obelisk (48 page)

"All of them are right," I reply.

"Surely you haven't drunk that much," he growls behind me, somewhat startled....

As I near home someone jumps on me from behind our door. "Now I've got you, you swine!"

I shake him off, thinking it some kind of joke. But he is on his feet again instantly and butts me in the stomach with his head. I fall against the obelisk but manage to plant a kick in his belly: a weak kick because I am falling. The man leaps on me again, and I recognize the horse butcher Watzek. "Have you gone crazy?" I ask. "Can't you see who I am?"

"I see all right!" Watzek seizes me by the throat. "I see you well enough, you bastard! But this is the end of you."

I don't know whether he is drunk, but I have no time to consider the question. Watzek is smaller than I, but he has the muscles of a bull. I succeed in carrying him over backward and pinning him against the obelisk. He lets go halfway. I throw myself and him to one side and knock his head against the foundation. He lets go completely. To make sure, I give him a blow under the chin with my shoulder, get up, go to the gate, and turn on the light. "What's all this?" I say.

Watzek gets up slowly. He is shaking his head, still somewhat dazed. I watch him. Suddenly he runs at me again with his head aimed at my stomach. I step to one side, put out my leg, and he hits the obelisk again with a dull thud, this time between the socles. Anyone else would have been knocked silly; Watzek hardly reels. He turns around with a knife in his hand. It is his long, sharp, butcher's knife, as I can see in the electric light. He has drawn it from his boot and now he is running at me. I indulge in no superfluous- heroism; it would be suicide against a man like the horse butcher, who knows how to use a knife. I spring behind the obelisk; Watzek after me. Fortunately I am quicker and lighter on my feet than he. "Are you crazy?" I hiss. "Do you want to be hanged for murder?"

"I'll teach you to sleep with my wife!" Watzek gasps. "Blood will flow!"

Finally I realize what is happening. "Watzek!" I shout "You're murdering an innocent man!"

"Shit! I'll slit your throat!"

We race around the obelisk. It doesn't occur to me to call for help. Everything is happening too fast; besides, who could really help me? "You're deceived!" I gasp. "What's your wife to me?"

"You're sleeping with her, you devil!"

We continue to run—first to the right, then to the left. Watzek wearing boots, is clumsier than I. Damn it! I think. Where is Georg? I'll be slaughtered for him while he sits in his room with Lisa. "Ask your wife, you idiot!" I gasp.

"I'll slaughter you!"

I look about for a weapon. There is nothing. Before I could lift a small headstone, Watzek would have my throat cut. Suddenly I see a piece of marble about the size of my fist shimmering on the window sill. I seize it, dance around the obelisk and hurl it at Watzek's skull. It hits him on the left side. Right away blood streams over one eye so that he can only see with the other. "Watzek! You're mistaken!" I say. "I've had nothing to do with your wife! I swear it to you!"

Watzek is slower now, but he is still dangerous. "To do that to a friend!" he growls. "What foulness!"

He makes a lunge like a miniature bull. I spring aside, grab the piece of marble again and throw it at him. Unfortunately it misses and lands in the lilac bush. "Your wife doesn't matter a shit to me!" I hiss. "Understand that, man! Not a shit!"

Watzek goes on chasing me in silence. Now he is bleeding profusely on the left side; I run to the left so that he can't see me clearly. At a dangerous moment I succeed in catching him with a good kick in the knee. At the same instant he stabs but only slices the sole of my shoe. The kick has its effect. Watzek stops, bleeding, his knife ready. "Listen to me!" I say. "Stay where you are! Let's have an armistice for a minute! After that you can start again right away, and I'll knock your other eye out! Pay attention, man! Try, you imbecile!" I stare at Watzek as though trying to hypnotize him. Once I read a book about that. "I—have—not—had—anything—to—do—with—your—wife—" I chant distinctly and slowly. "She doesn't interest me! Hold on!" I hiss as Watzek makes a new move. "I have a woman of my own—"

"All the worse, you goat!"

Watzek takes up the chase, but collides with the foundation of the obelisk on too close a turn; he stumbles, and I give him another kick, this time in the shin. He is wearing boots, but this kick does the trick. Watzek halts, his legs apart, unfortunately still holding the knife. "Stop this, you ass!" I say in the impressive tones of a hypnotist. "I'm in love with an entirely different woman! Hold on! I'll, show her to you! I have her photograph here!"

Watzek makes a silent lunge. We make another half-turn around the obelisk. I succeed in getting my wallet out. Gerda at parting has given me a picture of herself. I fumble desperately for it. A few billion marks slide colorfully to the ground; then I find the photo. "Here!" I say, warily pushing it toward him along the obelisk so that he can't hack at my hand. "Is this your wife? Look at it! Read the inscription!"

Watzek squints at me with his uninjured eye. I place Gerda's picture on the foundation of the obelisk. "So there you have it! Is that your wife?"

Watzek makes a halfhearted attempt to catch me. "You camel!" I say. "Just look at the photograph! Do you think anyone with something like that would run after your wife?"

I've gone almost too far. The insult provokes a lively lunge. Then he stands still. "Somebody is sleeping with her!" he announces uncertainly.

"Nonsense!" I say. "Your wife is true to you!"

"Then why is she here all the time?"

"Where?"

"Here!"

"I have no idea what you mean," I say. "She may have come here a few times to telephone, that's possible. Women like to telephone, especially when they're alone a lot. Get her a telephone!"

"She's here at night too!" Watzek says.

We are still standing facing each other with the obelisk between us. "She was here for a few minutes the night a while back when they brought Sergeant Major Knopf home seriously ill," I reply. "Aside from that she has been working at the Red Mill."

'That's what she says—but—"

The knife is hanging. I pick up Gerda's photograph and walk around the obelisk to Watzek. "So," I say. "Now you can stab me as much as you like. But we can talk to each other too. What do you want to do? Murder an innocent man?"

"Not that," Watzek says after a pause. "But—"

It transpires that the widow Konersmann has been talking to him. I am mildly flattered that she believes I am the only one in the house who could be the culprit. "Man," I say to Watzek, "if you knew where my thoughts are, you wouldn't suspect me. And besides, just compare the figure. Don't you notice something?"

Watzek gapes at Gerda's photograph and the inscription: 'Tor Ludwig with love from Gerda." What could he possibly notice with his one eye? "Similar to your wife's," I say. "Same size. Besides, hasn't your wife a loose coat, rust-red, something like a cape?"

"Sure," Watzek replies, once more growing dangerous. "She has. What of it?"

"This lady has one too. You can get them in all sizes at Max Klein's in Grossestrasse. They're the style just now. Well, old Konersmann is half blind—there we have the solution."

Old Konersmann has eyes like a hawk, but what won't a cuckold believe if he wants to? "She has confused them," I say. "This lady has been here a few times to visit me. Which she has a perfect right to do, don't you think?"

I am making it easy for Watzek. He need only say yes or no. This time he need only nod. "All right," I say. "And for this a fellow almost gets stabbed to death in the dark."

Watzek lowers himself painfully to the doorstep. "Comrade, you treated me pretty rough too. Just look at me."

"Your eye is still there."

Watzek touches the black, congealing blood. "You'll be in the penitentiary before long if you go on this way," I say.

"What am I to do? It's my nature."

"Stab yourself if you have to stab someone. That would spare you a lot of unpleasantness."

"Sometimes a man would like to do just that! Comrade, what am I to do? I'm crazy about my wife. And she can't stand me."

Suddenly I feel touched and weary; I lower myself onto the step beside Watzek. "It's my profession," he says in despair. "She hates it. You know a man smells of blood if he spends all his time slaughtering horses."

"Haven't you another suit? One you could put on before leaving the slaughterhouse?"

"That won't do. The other butchers would think I was putting on airs. Besides, the smell would come through. It clings."

"What about a bath?"

"A bath?" Watzek asks. "Where? In the municipal baths? They're closed when I come home from work at six in the morning."

"Isn't there a shower at the slaughterhouse?"

Watzek shakes his head. "Only hoses to wash down the floors. It's too cold now to stand under them."  I can understand that. Ice-cold water in November is no pleasure. If Watzek were Karl Brill, it wouldn't bother him at all. Karl is the man who chops a hole in the river ice so he can go swimming with his club. "What about toilet water?" I ask.

"What?"

"Perfume, to drown out the smell of blood."

"I can't try that. The others would take me for a pansy. "You don't know those fellows at the slaughterhouse!"

"How about changing your profession?"

"I don't know any other," Watzek says sadly.

"Horse dealer," I suggest. "That's the same line."

Watzek dismisses the idea. We sit for a time in silence. What does he matter to me? I think. And how can anyone help him? Lisa is in love with the Red Mill. It's not so much Georg
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, it's her aspiration to rise above her horse butcher. "You must become a cavalier," I say finally. "Do you make good money?"

"Not bad."

"Then you're in luck. Go to the municipal baths every other day and buy a new suit to wear only at home. A couple of shirts, a tie or two—can you manage that?"

Watzek broods. "You think that would help?"

I remember my evening under the critical eye of Frau Terhoven. "You'll feel better in a new suit," I reply. "I've had that experience myself."

"Really?"

"Really."

Watzek looks at me with interest. "But your clothes are always first-class."

"That depends. To you, perhaps. Not to certain others. I have noticed that."

"Have you? Recently?"

"Today," I say.

Watzek's mouth flies open. "Think of that! Then we're almost like brothers. It's amazing!"

"I read somewhere that all men are brothers. That's even more amazing when you look at the world."

"And we almost killed each other!" Watzek says happily.

"Brothers often do."

Watzek gets up. "I'm going to the baths tomorrow." He feels his left eye. "I really intended to order an SA uniform. They've just been put on sale in Munich."

"A natty, double-breasted dark gray suit would be better. There's no future for your uniform."

"Many thanks," Watzek says. "But perhaps I'll manage both. And don't hold it against me, comrade, that I tried to knife you. Tomorrow I'm going to send you a big dish of first-class horse sausage to make up for it."

"The cuckold is like a domestic animal," Georg says, "an edible one, a chicken, let's say, or a rabbit. You eat it with pleasure provided you don't know it personally. But if you grow up with it, play with it, feed and protect it—then only a barbarian could relish it as a roast. That's why one should never know cuckolds."

Silently I point at the table. There between the samples of stones lies a thick, red sausage—horse sausage—a gift Watzek left for me this morning. "Are you going to eat it?" Georg asks.

"Of course I'm going to eat it. I've eaten worse horse meat before, in France. But don't dodge the issue! There lies Watzek's gift. I am in a dilemma."

"Only because you love dramatic situations."

"All right," I say. "I grant that. Nevertheless, I saved your life. Widow Konersmann is going to keep on spying. Is the affair worth it?"

Georg gets a Brazilian out of the cupboard. "Watzek considers you his brother now," he replies. "Is that what causes your conflict of conscience?"