“I swear to you that’s not true! I may have said it occasionally, the way you do. But not in earnest!” The drops in his eyes have grown bigger. “He actually saved my life, you know.”
Riesenfeld gets up. “I’ve had enough of this lifesaving nonsense! Will you be in the office this afternoon? Good!”
“Don’t send her any more flowers, Riesenfeld,” Georg warns him.
Riesenfeld assents and disappears with an indecipherable look on his face.
“Let’s drink to Valentin,” Eduard says. His lips are trembling. “Who would have thought it! He got through the whole war and now suddenly he’s lying dead, from one second to the next.”
“If you’re going to be sentimental, do it in style,” I reply. “Fetch a bottle of the wine you always begrudged him.”
“The Johannisberger, yes indeed.” Eduard gets up quickly and waddles away.
“I believe he’s honestly grieved,” Georg says.
“Honestly grieved and honestly relieved.”
“That’s what I mean. Usually you can’t ask for more.”
We sit in silence for a time. “There’s rather a lot going on just now, isn’t there?” I say finally.
Georg looks at me. “Prost! You’d have had to go sometime. And as for Valentin, he has lived quite a few years longer than anyone would have expected in 1917.”
“So have we all.”
“Yes, and for that reason we should make something of it.”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
Georg laughs. “You’re making something of life if you don’t want anything at any particular moment beyond what you’ve got.”
I salute him. “Then I’ve made nothing of mine. And you?”
He grins. “Come along, let’s get out of here before Eduard comes back. To hell with his wine!”
“Tender one,” I murmur, my face turned toward the dark wall. “Tender and wild one, whiplash and mimosa, how foolish I was to want to possess you! Can one lock up the wind? What would become of it? Stale air. Go now, go your way, go to the theaters, the concerts, go and marry a reserve officer, a bank director, a conquering hero of the inflation, go, miracle of a gale that has become a calm, go, Youth who abandons only those who wish to abandon you, banner that flutters but cannot be seized, sail against many blue skies, fata morgana, fountain of sparkling words, go, Isabelle, go, my late-recovered, somewhat too knowing and too precocious youth, snatched back from beyond the war, go both of you, and I, too, will go. We have nothing to reproach ourselves for; our directions are different, but that, too, is only an appearance, for no one can betray death, one can only endure it. Farewell! We die a little each day, but each day we have lived a little longer too; you have taught me that and I will not forget it; nowhere is there annihilation, and he who does not try to hold on to anything possesses everything; farewell, I kiss you with my empty lips, I embrace you with my arms and cannot and will not hold you; farewell, farewell, you are in me and will remain there as long as I do not forget you—”
I have a bottle of Roth schnaps in my hand and I am sitting on the last bench in the allée, facing the asylum. In my pocket crackles a check for sound foreign exchange, thirty whole Swiss francs. Marvels have not ceased: a Swiss newspaper, which I have been bombarding with my poems for two years, has suddenly accepted one and sent me a check for it. I have already been to the bank to inquire—it’s perfectly good. The bank manager immediately offered me a quantity of black marks for it. I am carrying the check in my breast pocket next to my heart. It came a few days too late. With it I could have bought a new suit and a white shirt and cut a respectable figure in the eyes of the ladies Terhoven. Too late! The December wind whistles, the check crackles, and I sit here in an imaginary tuxedo, wearing a pair of imaginary patent-leather shoes, which Karl Brill still owes me, and I praise God and worship you, Isabelle! A handkerchief of finest batiste flutters from my breast pocket, I am a capitalist on a pleasure trip; if the whim strikes me the Red Mill lies at my feet, in my hand sparkles the fearless drinker’s champagne, the tipple of Sergeant Major Knopf with which he put death to flight—and I drink to the gray wall behind which are you, Isabelle, Youth, and your mother, and God’s bookkeeper, Bodendiek, and Wernicke, Reason’s major, and the great confusion and the eternal war; I drink and see opposite me on the left the District Lying-in Hospital, with a few windows still lighted, where mothers are giving birth, and I am struck for the first time by its proximity to the insane asylum—I recognize it, as indeed I should, for I was born there and until today I had not thought of that! Salutations to you, too, familiar home, beehive of fruitfulness; they took my mother to you because we were poor and there was no charge for a delivery if it took place with a class looking on; thus from the very start I was useful to science! Salutations to the unknown architect who placed you so suggestively close to the other building! Very likely he intended no irony, but the good jokes in the world are always made by serious practical men. Nevertheless—let us praise reason, but let us not be too proud of it and not too sure! You, Isabelle, have yours back again, that gift of the Greeks, and up there sits Wernicke rejoicing—and he is right. But each time you are right you are one step closer to death. He who is right all the time has turned into a black obelisk! His own monument!
The bottle is empty. I throw it as far away as I can, and it makes a dull thud in the soft, plowed field. I get up. I have had enough to drink and now I am ready for the Red Mill. Riesenfeld is giving a farewell party there tonight—a farewell and lifesaving party. Georg will be there and so will Lisa. I, too, am going, but I had my few private farewells to attend to, and after all of it we are going to celebrate a terrific and general farewell—the farewell to the inflation.
Late at night we move like a drunken funeral procession along Grossestrasse. The scattered street lamps nicker. We have buried the year a little prematurely. Willy and Renée de la Tour have joined us. Willy and Riesenfeld got into a heated argument; Riesenfeld swore to the end of the inflation and the beginning of the rye mark era—and Willy explained that he would be bankrupt then and so it couldn’t be true. At this Renée de la Tour grew thoughtful.
Through the windy night we see in the distance another procession. It is coming toward us up Grossestrasse. “Georg,” I say. “Suppose we leave the ladies a little way behind; this looks like a fight.”
“Agreed.”
We are near New Market. “If you see we’re getting the worst of it, run straight to the Cafe” Matz,” Georg instructs Lisa. “Ask for Bodo Ledderhose’s singing club and say we need them.” He turns to Riesenfeld: “It would be better for you to pretend you aren’t with us.”
“Run, Renée,” Willy remarks. “Keep away from the shooting!”
The other procession has reached us. Its members are wearing boots, the pride and joy of German patriots; with one or two exceptions they are all twenty years old. On the other hand, they are twice as many as we.
We start by. “There’s that red dog!” someone shouts suddenly. Even at night Willy’s shock of hair is conspicuous. “And the bald pate!” a second shouts, pointing at Georg. “After them!”
“Get going, Lisa!” Georg says.
We see her heels flash. “The cowards are going to call the police,” shouts a bespectacled towhead, starting after Lisa. Willy sticks out his foot and the towhead pitches forward. After that we’re in a fight.
There are five of us, not counting Riesenfeld. Really four and a half. The half is Hermann Lotz, a war comrade, whose left arm was amputated at the shoulder. He and little Kohler, another comrade, ran into us in the Café Central. “Watch out, Hermann, or they’ll knock you down!” I shout. “Stay in the middle. And you, Kohler, if they get you on the ground bite!”