I weigh the gold piece in my hand. It bears the likeness of Wilhelm n, who is now sawing wood in Holland and growing a pointed beard. On the coin he still wears the proudly waxed mustache which once meant: It has been achieved. It certainly has been achieved. “Where did you get it?” I ask.
“From a widow who inherited a whole chest of them.”
“Good God! What’re they worth?”
“Four billion paper marks apiece. A small house, or a dozen beautiful women. A week at the Red Mill. Eight months’ pension for one of the severely wounded war—”
“Enough—”
Heinrich Kroll enters, the bicycle clips on his striped pants. “This will enchant your loyal, subservient heart,” I say, sending the golden bird spinning to him through the air. He catches it and stares at it with tear-filled eyes. “His Majesty,” he says with emotion. “Those were the days! We still had our army!”
“Apparently they were different days for different people,” I reply.
Heinrich looks at me reproachfully. “You’ll have to admit they were better days than these!”
“Possibly!”
“Not possibly! Certainly! We had order, we had a stable currency, we had no unemployed, but a thriving economy
instead, and we were a respected people. Won’t you agree to that?”
“At once.”
“Well then! What have we today?”
“Disorder, seven million unemployed, a false economy, and we are a conquered people,” I reply.
Heinrich is taken aback. He hadn’t thought it would be so easy. “Well then,” he repeats. “Today we are sitting in the muck and then we were living on the fat of the land. Even you can probably draw the logical conclusion, can’t you?”
“I’m not sure. What is it?”
“It’s damn simple! That we must have a Kaiser and a decent national government again!”
“Hold on!” I say. “You’ve forgotten something. You’ve forgotten the important word because. That is the heart of the evil. It’s the reason that today millions like you raise their trunks again and trumpet this nonsense. The little word because.”
“What’s that?” Heinrich asks blankly.
“Because!” I repeat. “The word because! Today we have seven million unemployed and inflation and we have been conquered because we had the national government you love so much! Because that government in its megalomania made war! Because we had your beloved blockheads and puppets in uniform as our government! And we must not have them back to make things go better; instead we must be careful that they don’t come back, because otherwise they will drive us into war again and into the muck again. You and your friends say: Yesterday things went well; today they are going badly—so let’s have the old government back. But in reality it should be: Today things are going badly because yesterday we had the old government—so to hell with it! Catch on? The little word because! That’s something your friends like to forget! Because!”
“Nonsense!” Heinrich splutters in rage. “You communist!”
Georg breaks into wild laughter. “For Heinrich everyone is a communist who isn’t on the extreme right.”
Heinrich inflates his chest for an armored retort. The image of the Kaiser has made him strong. At this moment, however, Kurt Bach comes in. “Herr Kroll,” he asks Heinrich, “is the angel to stand at the right or left of the text: ‘Here lies Master Tinsmith Quartz’?”
“What’s that?”
“The bas-relief angel on Quartz’s tombstone.”
“On the right, of course,” Georg says. “Angels always stand on the right.”
Heinrich exchanges the role of national prophet for that of tombstone salesman. “I’ll come with you,” he announces ill-humoredly and puts the gold piece back on the table. Kurt Bach sees it and picks it up. “Those were the days!” he says enthusiastically.
“So, for you too,” Georg replies. “What sort of days were they, then, for you?”
“The days of free art! Bread cost pfennigs, schnaps a fiver, life was full of ideals, and with a couple of those gold pieces you could travel to the blessed land of Italy without any fear that they would be worthless when you got there.”
Bach kisses the eagle, lays the coin back, and grows ten years older. Heinrich and he disappear. As a parting shot Heinrich calls from the door, a darkly threatening look on his fat face: “Heads will roll yet!”
“What was that?” I ask Georg in amazement. “Wasn’t it one of Watzek’s favorite phrases? Are we, perhaps, about to see the embattled cousins joining forces?”
Georg stares thoughtfully after Heinrich. “Perhaps,” he says. “Then it will become dangerous. Do you know what’s so hopeless? In 1918 Heinrich was a rabid opponent of the war. Since then he has forgotten everything that made him oppose it, and the war has become a jolly adventure.” He puts the twenty-mark piece into his vest pocket. “Everything you survive becomes an adventure. It makes one sick! And the more horrible it was, the more adventurous it seems in recollection. Only the dead could really judge the war; they alone experienced it completely.”
He looks at me. “Experienced?” I say. “Expired.”
“They and the ones who have not forgotten it,” he goes on. “But there are very few of them. Our damnable memory is a sieve. It wants to survive. And survival is only possible through forgetfulness.”
He put his hat on. “Come along,” he says. “We’ll see what sort of days our gold bird will call up in Eduard Knobloch’s memory.
“Isabelle!” I say deeply astonished.
I see her sitting on the terrace in front of the pavilion for the incurables. There is no trace of the twitching, tormented creature I saw last time. Her eyes are clear, her face is calm, and she seems to me more beautiful than I have ever seen her—but this may be because of the contrast to last time.
It has rained during the afternoon and the garden is glistening with moisture and sunlight. Above the city, clouds float against a pure, medieval blue, and the whole fenestrated front of the building has been transformed into a gallery of mirrors. Unconcerned about the hour, Isabelle is wearing an evening dress of very soft black material and her golden shoes. On her right arm hangs a bracelet of emeralds—it must be worth more than our whole business, including the inventory, the buildings, and the income for the next five years. She has never worn it before. It’s a day of rarities, I think. First the golden Wilhelm II and now this! But the bracelet does not move me.
“Do you her them?” Isabelle asks. “They have drunk deep and well and now they are calm and satisfied and at peace. They are humming deeply like a million bees.”
“Who?”
“The trees and all the bushes. Didn’t you hear them screaming yesterday when it was so dry?”
“Can they scream?”
“Naturally. Couldn’t you hear it?”
“No,” I say, looking at her bracelet, which sparkles as though it had green eyes.
Isabelle laughs. “Oh, Rudolf, you hear so little!” she says tenderly. “Your ears have grown shut like a boxwood hedge. And then you make so much noise too—that’s why you hear nothing.”
“I make noise? How do you mean?”
“Not with words. But in other ways you make a dreadful amount of noise, Rudolf. Often one can hardly stand you. You make more noise than the hydrangeas when they are thirsty, and they’re really terrific screamers.”