“You’ll get one,” Bodo Ledderhose replies. “Come along now, before the police turn up.”
Just then there is the sound of a resounding slap. We turn around in surprise. Lisa has hit someone. “You damned drunkard!” she says with dignity. “So this is the way you look after your home and wife—”
“You—” the figure gurgles.
Lisa’s hand descends again. And now, suddenly, the knots of memory are released. Watzek! There he stands, oddly grasping his behind.
“My husband!” Lisa says to New Market in general. “That’s the man I’m married to.”
Watzek makes no reply. He is bleeding profusely. The old wound I gave him has opened again. In addition, blood is running out of his hair. “Did you do that with your brief case?” I ask Riesenfeld softly.
He nods, watching Watzek attentively. “What odd places people meet!” he says.
“What’s the matter with his rear end?” I ask. “Why is he holding onto it?”
“A wasp sting,” Renée de la Tour replies, replacing a long hat pin in her ice blue satin cap.
“My respects!” I bow low before her and go over to Watzek. “So,” I say, “now I know who was butting me in the stomach! Is this the thanks I get for my instruction in a finer way of life?”
Watzek stares at me. “You? I didn’t recognize you! My God!”
“He never recognizes anybody,” Lisa explains sarcastically.
Watzek makes a sorry picture. And yet I notice that he has actually followed my advice. He has had his mane cut, with the result that Riesenfeld’s blow was all the more effective; he is also wearing a new white shirt, on which the bloodstains show up clearly. He really is a bad-luck bird.
“Back home with you! You pig’s foot, you brawler!” Lisa says, departing. Watzek follows her at once. They wander across New Market, a strange pair. No one follows them. Georg helps Lotz adjust his artificial arm.
“Come along,” Ledderhose says. “We can still get a drink in my inn. A private party!”
We sit for a while with Bodo and his club. Then we start
homeward. The gray of dawn is crawling across the streets. A newspaper boy comes by Riesenfeld motions to him. The big headlines on the front page read: INFLATION ENDS! ONE MARK FOR A TRILLION!
“Well?” Riesenfeld says to me.
I nod.
“Children, I may actually be broke,” Willy announces. “I’ve kept on playing it short.” He looks ruefully at his gray suit and then at Renée. “Well, easy come, easy go—it was only money anyway.”
“Money is very important,” Renée replies coolly. “Especially when you haven’t got it.”
Georg and I walk along Marienstrasse. “Strange that Watzek got his beating from me and Riesenfeld,” I say, “not from you. It would have been more natural if you and he had fought.”
“More natural, perhaps, but not more fair.”
“Fair?” I ask.
“In a complicated sense. I’m too tired now to disentangle it. Men with bald heads oughtn’t to fight. They ought to philosophize.”
“Then you’ll have a lonesome life. The times look like fighting.”
“Maybe not. Some kind of horrid carnival has come to an end. Doesn’t today feel like a cosmic Ash Wednesday? A huge soap bubble has burst.”
“And?” I say.
“And?” he replies.
“Someone will blow a new and bigger one.”
“Perhaps.”
We stop in the garden. The milky light of morning is streaming like a gray flood around the crosses. The youngest Knopf daughter appears, sleepy-eyed. She has been waiting up for us. “Father says you can buy back the headstone for twelve trillion.”
“Tell him we offer eight marks. And the offer only holds until noon today. Money will be very short.”
“What’s that?” Knopf asks from his bedroom window, where he has been listening.
“Eight marks, Herr Knopf. And after noon today only six. Prices are going down. Who would ever have expected that, eh? Instead of up.”
“I’d rather keep it through all eternity, you damned grave robbers!” Knopf screeches, slamming the window.
Chapter Twenty Four
The Werdenbrück Poets’ Club is holding a farewell party for me in the Old German Room at the Walhalla. The poets are uneasy; they pretend deep feeling. Hungermann is the first to come up to me. “You know my poems. You yourself said they were one of your deepest poetical experiences. Deeper than Stefan George.”
He looks at me intently. I never said anything of the sort. It was Bambuss who said it: in return Hungermann said that he considered Bambuss more significant than Rilke. But I do not correct him. I look expectantly at the poet of Casanova and Mohammed.
“Well then,” Hungermann goes on, but his attention is distracted. “By the way where did you get that new suit?”
“I bought it today with a Swiss honorarium,” I reply with all the modesty of a peacock. “It’s the first new suit I’ve had since I was a soldier of His Majesty. No remade uniform. Real civilian clothes! The inflation is over!”
“A Swiss honorarium? So you’re already internationally known? Well, well,” Hungermann says, surprised and instantly rather vexed. “From a newspaper?”
I nod. The author of “Casanova” makes a deprecatory gesture. “I thought so!” Of course my things are not for the daily press! Only for first-rate literary magazines, if at all. Unfortunately a volume of my poems was published by Arthur Bauer here in Werdenbrück three months ago. An outrage!”
“Were you forced to do it?”
“Yes, morally speaking. Bauer lied to me. He said he was going to launch a terrific publicity campaign, he was going to enlarge his press and publish not only my work but Morike, Goethe, Rilke, Stefan George, and, above all, Holder-lin. He hasn’t done any of it.”
“He published Otto Bambuss,” I reply.
Hungermann frowns. “Bambuss—between us, a bungler and imitator. That did me harm. Do you know how many copies of my work Bauer has sold? No more than five hundred!”
I know from Bauer that the entire printing consisted of two hundred and fifty copies; twenty-eight have been sold and nineteen of these were bought secretly by Hungermann. And it was not Hungermann who was forced to publish but Bauer. Hungermann blackmailed him with the threat of recommending another book dealer to the high school where he teaches.
“Now that you’re going to be on a newspaper in Berlin,” Hungermann goes on, “you know, friendship among artists is the noblest thing in the world!”
“I know. The rarest too.”
“So it is.” Hungermann draws a slender volume out of his pocket. “Here—with a dedication. Write something about it in Berlin. And send me two proofs. On my side, I will keep faith with you here in Werdenbrück. And if you find a good publisher up there—the second volume is in preparation.”
“Agreed.”
“I knew I could rely on you.” Hungermann solemnly shakes my hand. “Aren’t you going to publish something soon?”
“No. I’ve given it up.”
“What?”
I’m going to wait a while,” I say. “I want to look around in the world a bit.”
“Very wise!” Hungermann exclaims with emphasis. “If only more people would do that instead of publishing immature stuff and getting in the way of their betters!”
He looks sharply around the room. I expect at least a wink, but he is all seriousness. I have turned into a business opportunity and his sense of humor has abandoned him. “Don’t tell the others about our arrangement,” he adds with emphasis.